From: Lifehack - Monday Feb 12, 2018 10:03 am
Happy Monday! I hope you had a refreshing weekend. I want to start the week by giving you something to work on that can completely transform your ability to get things done. Over the years one of the key differentiators I've seen the sharpest and most successful people have is their ability to focus, and to stay focused. Generally, they are the ones who are able to achieve far more than their counterparts - often within an even shorter timeframe. Mastering your Focus is an invaluable ability to have. It's a lot harder to stay focused these days, because there are so many easy distractions at hand. Each little distraction sometimes only diverts for a few seconds or minutes, so they don't really seem like much. But I can tell you that the cost of these distractions are immense, and they accumulate. At the end of the day, they are often the key factor that determines whether you achieve a goal or you don't. This isn't only in the context of work either. This applies to anything in your personal life that you are trying to achieve. If you lack Focus, every distraction is robbing you of your future dreams and successes. Don't underestimate it. Is Focus something only certain "smart" people have? Definitely not. Like a fit body, it's something you can develop and train. Here's how. One of the chief causes that lead us towards distractions is boredom. If a bodybuilder utilizes weight-training as their muscle-building driver, boredom-training is your mind's driver for building focus. In People Who Can Endure Boredom Are More Productive, I teach you how to leverage boredom to make into your focus-building muscle. Lastly, sometimes we can't focus simply because our minds are too drained of energy. The key is to look at our ability to focus like running a marathon. Each day our minds start out fresh (hopefully!) with a reserve of energy for focusing on different tasks. Like each mile in a marathon, our energy is drained each time we ration out our attention. We're very used to scheduling our daily efforts in terms of hours, but instead let's flip it on it's side. How about scheduling our daily efforts in terms of how much attention we are spending across our tasks? How aware are you of how you ration out your attention? Are you over-spending attention on unnecessary things? In Are You Using Time Differently In The Knowledge Economy?, we describe this in more detail and give you practical methods for how to fundamentally change the way you allocate your mental energy. I challenge you to start training your focus-muscle superpower. It will return dividends to you in terms of clarity, productivity, and achievement in both your work and personal life. There's a lot more where these are coming from, so if you want more like this or if you'd like me to share other topics, please send me your feedback. Cheers! - Leon 
