It’s no great surprise that we aspire to improve our focus. With so much to do and such limited time to do it, many of us are overwhelmed with responsibilities. As we try to balance work, personal commitments, and a million other obligations, we drain our mental resources. As a result, focusing and getting things done becomes even more challenging. It’s a miserable cycle that traps far too many of us.
How can we restore our focus? How can we preserve the mental resources that we so desperately require? How can we manage the multitude of responsibilities we face on a daily basis? The answer to these questions is to find stillness. To be steady while the world spins around us. To act without frenzy. To hear what needs to be heard.
Stillness is the doorway to focus, discipline, and self-mastery. It enables us to recharge our mental batteries, to avoid distractions, to suppress feelings of regret and anxiety, and to do our best work. It’s something that all great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries have found a way to harness. It’s impossible to charge ahead in life without it.
Below are three ways to cultivate stillness in your life. If you can put these methods into practice, you’ll be more focused and more creative, and much happier as a result.
1) Limit Your Inputs
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” -Herbert Simon
Every day we face an ambush of unimportant messages, headlines, meetings, and notifications, each one of which we tell ourselves is of great importance. Downloading apps and subscribing to news outlets and widening our social circles, we’re always making ourselves busier and busier without ever considering what it costs us.
Then we wonder where all our time has gone and why we can’t get anything done—as if it’s some great mystery. In order to think clearly, it is essential that each of us figures out how to filter out the inconsequential from the essential.
Napoleon used to wait three weeks before opening any of his mail. He didn’t wait that long out of negligence; rather, he knew that doing so would give the unimportant issues time to resolve themselves. Surely this habit saved Napoleon time, but more importantly, it removed a trivial task from his day and cleared the way for his more important work.
While President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office, he had a system not unlike Napoleon’s. To help manage the storm of information that came his way, he adhered to a strict chain of command regarding information, insisting that no one ever hand him unopened mail, or come to him with half-explored problems. Just as ignoring the mail allowed Napoleon to lock in on his higher priorities, this system let Eisenhower focus on what mattered. As president, his time was simply too valuable to get bogged down by all that meaningless stimuli.
Our time is valuable too. We should try to cultivate a similar attitude—give things a little space, don’t consume news in real time, be a season or two behind on the latest trend or cultural phenomenon, don’t let your inbox rule your life. It’s difficult to stay focused (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information.
It’s not enough to be inclined toward focus and sober analysis; we have to create the time and space necessary for it.
We’ve got to be more judicious with what we decide is worthy of our time and attention.
2) Empty The Mind
“It is impossible to hit and think at the same time.” -Yogi Berra
Even after removing our external distractions, sometimes the biggest distractions of all come from within. Any time we try to focus on something, our own anxious thoughts can be a strong resisting force. If we’re ever going to have success at something—whether it’s a book we’re writing, a startup we’re launching, or a competitive sport we play—we have to block out that negative energy. All it does is complicate what we’re doing.
Take professional sports for example. In baseball, one bad plate appearance can put a player into a slump. One strikeout, and hitting a baseball becomes even harder and more complicated the next time—the ball starts to look smaller, the pitcher appears ten feet tall on the mound, and the batter no longer trusts his swing.
What’s funny about a slump is that it rarely has anything to do with a player’s skill or mechanics. Or the pitcher’s, for that matter. A slump is just a closed loop of poor performance, memories of that poor performance, and diminished confidence. The more a batter thinks about the slump he’s in, the less focus he has during his next at-bat, and the further into the slump he falls.
When we worry too much about the results of something, or try too hard to control the outcome, we become distracted and our performance suffers. What used to be effortless is now a complicated mess of anxiety and self-doubt. D.T. Suzuki, one of the pioneers of Buddhism in the West, once said, “Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlessness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.” Performing any task at a high level requires focus, and focus only comes with a clear mind.
The key to making anything look easy is to convince yourself that it truly is easy. To do that you have to trust your abilities and accept the outcome.
Don’t try to break the slump, don’t try not to strike out, just play baseball.
3) Become Present
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” --Buddha
To be present sounds so simple. It’s easy in theory, but in practice, it’s one of the hardest things in the world. We are constantly removing ourselves from the present moment. Whether we’re evaluating our past or trying to predict our future, either way we are neglecting what’s in front of us. Unsurprisingly, it inhibits our performance.
As we stand on the podium, about to give a speech, our mind is focused not on our task but on what everyone will think of us. When we face an obstacle, our mind repeats on a loop of just how unfair this is, how insane it is that it keeps happening and how it can’t go on. Even during a quiet evening at home, all we’re thinking about is a list of things we need to do in the morning or something we said earlier that we wish we could take back. What do these thoughts actually do for us? The answer is essentially nothing, besides fill us with crippling anxiety and regret.
We need to resist these urges that remove us from the present moment. Any time we’re thinking about the past or the future, we’re not focused; we have allowed ourselves to run away from something that demands our attention and focus right now. Who is so talented that they can afford to bring only part of themselves to bear on a problem or opportunity? Who is so certain that they’ll get another moment that they can confidently skip over this one? The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.
This moment we are experiencing right now is a gift—that’s why we call it the present. But we try desperately to escape it—by thinking, doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever.
We are not present… and so we miss out. On life. On getting things done. On seeing what’s there. There is no greatness in the past or the future. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment. Be present.
And if you’ve had trouble with this in the past? That’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.
-Ryan Holiday
