A Winding Rant: Why Focus is the New Little Black Dress
I’m wont to be a lazy bastard.
Sometimes I wonder what the people who pick oranges for a living would think of my woe is me driveling.
Oh my god, I droll, I have to wake up, be demanded buttered toast by my snuggly near 2 year old, then watch cartoons for an hour. Then after a dreamy, light-filtered walk in the ancient trails with my cow dog, I slump into my chair in a private 8x8 cabin my fiancé built for me. From there, I speak with educated, kind people who like my ideas for eight hours. Occasionally on my lunch break, I can lie down and shut my eyes and listen to the sound of Tibetan drums on my app Insight Timer.
And I have the audacity to complain on occasion!
On the topic of horizontal lunch time, in this season of autumn, all I want to do is lie down.
Sadly, lying down is anathema to achieving many goals.
How are all these motherfuckers doing it? How are they doing it all? People say “having it all” is a myth but I swear to god I am seeing it done!
One of these things HAS to be on the chopping block for them. It has to be!
· Health, and more specifically, sleep
· Cleaning the house
· Mindfully eating
· Time or attention/presence with loved ones
· Cooking whole foods
Right?
I want to be a mega successful business women/artist person who dresses well, feels rested, plays with her daughter effortlessly, cooks meals from scratch (read: SOAKS HER OWN CASHEWS) and guess what? Doing even a Diet Coke version of this is gutting me like a fish. I’m so tired! And discouraged!
It seems the conventional wisdom jumps to this advice: Just put the phone down! You’ll get so much done! Stop scrollin’!
To which all my friends would say, Dude, she NEVER looks at her phone! She texted us “Guys, have you heard about this thing called Wordl?” in the fall of 2022. IN THE FALL OF 2022!
Yes! My phone is already down, peeps! I couldn’t tell you what was cool for the last decade (I’m saying the word PEEPS. I am not cool!). And I only go online to do three things: Look at the local surf cam, unsubscribe to newsletters I thought I already unsubscribed to and to look at pics of Chris Hemsworth.
THAT’S IT!
And while we’re at it: There’s nothing that makes me want to eat my hat more than the thought that microwaves, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers were designed to save us time.
Haha!
HAHAHAHAHA!
Let me tell you something, appliance pushers, we are all running around HAGGARD.
No one feels like “they have enough time for anything” and a lot of people feel like life is just calling your insurance company to argue, failing your latest diet attempt and trying not to get fired.
So if I’m not willing to give up any of the above (ie the bulleted list) , my phone is already down and I haven’t volunteered in at least four years … where do I look to do everything I want? What levers can I pull?
I have an idea. It’s a five-letter word for concentrating and starts with f. It is not “floss” or “frown” “frisk” (but hey, that last one sounds kind of fun).
That’s right.
Its’s: Focus.
Somehow, my ability to focus has not atrophied completely yet. In this arcade called life that we live in, where every moment some whirligig is dropping from the sky to tickle our brains, somehow my ability to focus has persevered like it was fucking MAD MARDIGAN.
I’ve often said (read, once), that a focused hour equals three unfocused hours. And I think I would be right.
This is my latest experiment:
It’s incredibly exacting, quantifiable and provable.
“See what happens when I focus completely for 90 minute stints.”
The 90 minutes interval is one that I cribbed as my only takeaway from a podcast episode by the masterful (and hot) Dr. Andrew Huberman of the eponymous (fancy!) Huberman Lab podcast. In an episode dedicated to memory and learning, he was discussing the optimal interval for learning as being 90 minutes. To me, I thought yes, it’s just long enough to make a dent, to be fully absorbed, but not long enough that your extremities go fully numb.
Cal Newport writes of this superpower in his book Deep Work, and it’s inspiring. It’s inspiring to me that, IN THESE TRYING TIMES (to quote every PSA or commercial or political campaign ever), the ability to focus while in the cyclone/ spin / chop might be the very thing that allows us to achieve our dreams.
And now dear reader, I can hear you saying, Duh.
Well, I’m sorry, but some of us have these epiphanies slower. Some of us are late bloomers to quotidian wisdom.
Ahem.
In this day where everything is vying for your attention, perhaps the single thing that can allow you to stand out and do good work, is the ability to focus.
I don’t know where it will take me, but I know that it’s something I can do, and I know that I’m unwilling to become an unhealthy, sleep deprived, unfriendly ogre. Giving focus a try seems to be the only logical next step.