Focusing Pt 1/4: The ground rules

For when my brain is acting like a pinball machine

It’s sitting right in front of you.

You cannot deny what you’re supposed to be working on.

And yet…

Your brain finds any and all excuses to look at literally anything else.

Bouncing from one thing to the next. Somehow always avoiding the one important thing.

“I should check my email”

“I think I heard my phone go off, I should handle that.”

“Man my desktop is a mess.”

It’s almost funny how easy your brain repeatedly passes over what you’re supposed to be doing in favor of a million other random things that don’t mean much. Leaving that document/project/task abandoned in minimized purgatory.

I know how that feels.

Unfortunately I haven’t solved it. But I have figured out how to make it a little bit easier. At least for myself.

So welcome to part one of my Focusing series!

Here’s the game plan:

Part 1: Non-negotiable rules and why (⬅️ you are here)

Part 2: The different parts of focusing

Part 3: Strategies I use for each aspect

Part 4: The ultimate training technique that you’re going to hate

We’re kicking off part 1 with 3 rules I came up with.

The reason they’re in a letter by themselves is because at least 1 or 2 of them will probably take some getting used to.

So my logic in giving them out on their own first is to give you a week to get comfy with them before we get into the hard stuff.

Like them or not, I believe they’re vital to actually making progress with focusing. Without all of them the chances of being stuck in a futile and damaging loop skyrocket.

Which leads me to…

⚠️Disclaimers⚠️ because I care about the spicy meatballs between y’alls ears:

I am not a mental health expert in any capacity. The strategies I talk about in this series are just what I experimented with on myself.

I do believe what I’m going to be talking about is important. But ONLY if it DOES NOT JEAPARDIZE your mental health. There’s a difference between learning to work with distractibility and doing mental harm.

Working on this stuff is difficult and can be taxing, I won’t deny it.

So please please PuhLEASE for the love of the gods do not push yourself to the point of burning out. I promise any amount of progress you do get from running yourself into the ground is not worth it and minimal anyway so there’s legit no reason to subject yourself to that.

Also I have been diagnosed with ADHD (as much as my imposter syndrome likes to deny it). But that does not make these strategies, “ADHD strategies”. It also does not make me an expert on ADHD. I’m only an expert on my ADHD. I phrase lots of things in absolutes. That doesn’t make them law. I just don’t want to type “I think” 8 million times.

Onto the ground rules

1. Accept these strategies take PRACTICE and REPETITION

I was not magically able to focus overnight. Neither will you. It takes time.

If someone told you what note each key on a keyboard was you wouldn’t expect to suddenly become a piano aficionado the next day.

If you only work on these things for like 3 days and think, “It just doesn’t work for me”…

Yeah no shit.

A river doesn’t form a canyon in 3 days.

You’re going to be bad at it at first. That’s the whole freaking point. You’re bad at it so you have to practice to get better slowly over time.

Also don’t expect to have it all down pat if you only practice once a week either. It takes consistent repetition. More repetition that you think is reasonable.

You won’t notice progress day to day.

If you look at a tree sapling every day, you won’t be able to tell it’s growing until a few months later and you realize it’s “suddenly” a foot tall.

Daily progress happens in miniscule amounts, but adds up.

2. Self compassion is a MUST

Because these things take time and practice, that little perfectionist voice in your head is probably going to be vocal.

It’s uncomfortable with being bad at things.

What it seems to fail to realize (or rather refuse to acknowledge) is that being bad at a thing is often a prerequisite for being good at the thing.

Depending on your relationship with that voice, it might be rather mean.

As much as that voice would like you to believe, you CANNOT bully yourself into SUSTAINABLE improvement.

You are not any less of a person because you struggle to focus. I don’t even need to know how hard it is for you to focus. I’m going to say it again.

You are not

Any less of a person

Because you struggle to focus.

Improving a skill becomes so much easier when the desire to improve is framed by a positive mindset.

And I know some of you have self deprecation as an unofficial job title.

But self compassion can also developed through practice and repetition. It is 💯% something I like to call an Investment Skill and it’s one that pays MASSIVE dividends.

I’m no psychology expert. But I had to go through my own self compassion training and I still practice on the regular. Worth it.

3. Moderation is MANDATORY

This goes hand in hand with both rules above. Like I said, you will not develop laser focus over night. No matter how hard you try.

In fact, if you push yourself too far you will literally push yourself in the wrong direction.

You don’t dump Lake Michigan on your tomato plant to make it grow faster.

You give it a little bit of water on a frequent basis. Spread out over weeks and months.

Before I started taking a smarter approach with improving my focus I’d just muscle through for as long as I could.

Which usually left my brain needing to buffer for over a day afterward. When I’d come back, it felt even harder to stay on task.

In case you’re a visual learner, here’s a graph comparing effort to progress to demonstrate what I mean:

This rule get’s it’s own slot because I know damn well that perfectionist voice is going to ignore rule 2 and try to bully you into being a master immediately. I am here to tell you that is the wrong move.

I also bring it up because learning to focus better is super uncomfortable. It took me forever to realize a big portion of the reason I had such a hard time was because I kept trying to avoid that discomfort.

Often growth is achieved by pushing through discomfort. BUT pushing too far will only leave you drained and wanting to avoid the effort altogether. Also counterproductive.

Yeah all of that sounds hippy woo woo mushy gushy whatever

But that doesn’t make them any less important.

Things I’ll talk about in this series will take thousands of repetitions. And if you bully yourself each time about it,

“why can’t I just stay on task? why can’t I just get back to work?”

It will take more like millions.

Believe me or not. But I’ve been there.

On good brain days I’d work myself to the bone because it felt like my only chance to get things done. Leading to frequent bad brain days.

Then on those bad brain days I’d mentally berate myself because I just couldn’t keep myself on task no matter how hard I tried.

And I wondered why I was so stressed 🙃

That’s all for part 1!

Next week I’ll be breaking down what I consider to be the core parts of focusing, as well as some adjacent skills I use for some extra oompf. So spend this week getting comfy cozy with the ground rules.

Which one do you think you’ll struggle with the most? I swear number 3 is the bane of my existence.