The last week has been in Las Vegas. Yep, it’s over the top here, but people are focused. They are focused on getting your attention, getting your time, getting your money; they’re focused. And as I sit at McCarran Airport waiting for my flight, I’m looking at the tower and thinking about the Air Traffic Controllers in there. They’re focused.
Their priority is clear: instruct aircraft so they can take off and land safely. That’s it. Schedules are nice and they need to keep everything moving, but this is about safe take offs and landings.
Did you know the tower doesn’t deal with taxiing? There’s a different tower for that. As a matter of fact, there’s a completely different radio frequency for that. They do one thing: safe movement of aircraft. They’re focused (and when they’re not, it becomes quickly un-safe for everyone involved).
“FOCUS” is an acronym:
Follow
One
Course
Until
Successful
It’s not 2 courses, or 10 courses – one course. Until you’re done. More accurately, until it’s done.
If you’re like me (and most people I know) you struggle with focus. The good news is there are two really useful things you can do about it. The first is work out. Yep, you heard me: work out. When you get to the gym regularly, you start to cultivate an ability to narrow your focus, perform a specific task that takes a lot of effort, and stay with it for a short but intense period of time. The same is true if you’re running, on the bike, whatever. Work out.
The other is meditate. Stop, breathe, stay with it and it’s incredible training for your brain.
Let’s face it, under pressure our minds tend to either scatter (we flail around and do all kinds of things to try to make something work) or we lock up. In either case, if you’ve trained your brain to hold focus, even just a little longer than those around you, suddenly you become the person who has their shit together when everyone else is losing theirs.
Focus. And stop losing your shit.
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