Book review: Focus

Recently I have completed reading Leo Babauta book on focusing. The book is free of charge, that is really a steal for the many thoughts and ideas that he shared in his book. In essense, he encourages people to lead a focus life while they go about doing their daily tasks, somewhat like less is good, and that less is actually more. The book advocates that we coiuld do simple life tests to check whether giving up some tasks would significantly affect our lives, for most of us will tend to do something out of fear of something. For example, I would like to keep abreast to the changes in the finance world for fear that I will miss out something important. He says that, if it is that important, word will come around and somebody will tell you about it. Therefore you would not need to get stressed over this.

The content from here onwards will be what I feel is my best takeaways from this book. If you want to increase your productivity in work, you got to focus on doing a specific task. Let no one else be able to disturb you from your momentum. As you gradually build up momentum, no matter how interested you feel prior to doing the project, you would feel negative about it and it would be classified as 'chore' in your mind. I have experienced it before on the day I touch back down in Singapore. I have to do an urgent application and the sources of distraction filled me a few minutes later. First source; my neighbour recently sold their house and got a handsome return from it due to the hot property market currently. So the new occupants are renovating the house and by 9 usually, the workers will begin their day. Second source of distraction, my dad came in to the room. I could feel that my productivity dropping and gradually I feel like I am a car that is trying to get its engine fired up. Hence, it does not always need to be a place in your home, if you find focus studying in school, library or the park, just bring your work there with you and begin typing away.

Secondly, for tech users, before going on I would like to define these users who needs the computer to do their work. I believe that I am one too. So, for those who needs to urgently churn out a report, spreadsheet or presentation, have only that application running and close all other applications during your focus block of time, which I will be mentioning later in the post. Also fill the screen with that application only. If I am intending to blog about this post, I will open up blogger and go to the text editor. No other programs, that is the rule to not hurting your productivity.

As mentioned, allocate specific blocks of time to focused work and unfocused work. A gauge would be for a period of 60mins, 40 will be focused and the other 20 will be other misc activities. Many would now say that this is easier said than done because the 40mins will feel like eternity if I am stuck on something and unable to continue. This is because the start when you are choosing the task to focus on is not the one that you feel like tackling at that moment. Some reasons could be because the tasks is too daunting, however I feel that if you adopt the focus approach, this usually does not have a case. Other reasons could be I am unable to figure out how to go about doing it, and therefore I am stuck. Now it depends, one, you could drop your focus activity because it does not make much sense to get stuck, or you could just have some quiet time and think about it in your sub-concious. Let nothing else distract you while you focus, like I was just distracted by my other task that I have to do. Distraction is bad, as nothing gets done. You will prefer to focus instead and kill off one task at a time.

If waking up early is a chore, think about waking up early is actually good.
Many people dislike the idea of waking up early. Why should I sacrifice my sleep hours and remain tired for the rest of the day? I recently tried waking up early, about a couple hours eariler than my morning appointment, and I manage to find time to do the things that I like to do. Sometimes, it could be work related too, and for that I get to progress on a task even when I did not schedule for it. Scheduling blocks of time to working and communicating is the next takeaway I have, though I have yet to really implement it in my life, as currently, my main obstacle is how to define my blocks of time in the day. I would usually plan for appointments in my calendar, but never plan for work till the morning or the night before the day (when I realized that I have no appointments that day and therefore I can work on my task list). This book has been a wonderful read and I hope that many readers will go over to Zen Habits and find the link to download the book.