Modern world is designed to steal as much of your focus as possible.
It’s not even an overstatement if we think of our collective focus as a national resource –
Look everywhere:
- Engaging media content algorithms
- Bold headlines on almost every webpage & billboard
- Sports, news, politics, & rabbit-holes
- Information overload!
We're swamped with distractions, opportunities, & information.
Sustained focus for a few months is increasingly becoming a super rare asset.
To the point that it really doesn’t matter what your day habits are if you’re not optimizing for focus.
I don’t think those who have achieved a 0.01% status in their fields did it by just working hard or having good habits or even “being consistent”. Consistency is not enough.
Because imagine if you have all the bandwidth in the world thanks to your perfect day routine & time mngt skills → Without focus to activate flow (losing sense of time & place while working on a task at hand), it all amounts to nothing.
If anything, all documentaries & stories of great companies they show the same type of things just before the story takes off: crazy all nighters, totally unhealthy lifestyles, random schedules, packs of red bulls, ideas that don't fit within a sane brain, and even drug addiction in some cases. Everything that is the exact opposite of what we can find in self-help books.
Which proves the point that extreme focus is the single most important player of Deep Work.
Systems & habits are just there to enhance it, not replace it.
And in that search to optimize for focus, I’ve found that only this Pyramid approach could actually do the trick for me → Sustain focus for months-long
The Focus Pyramid has 5 levels to it, each of them contributes a substantial part to claiming a higher-end vision:
- Environment
- Daily Routine
- Digital Systems
- Goals
- Vision
In my experience, they come in this exact order, and they can NOT be swapped.
Each one affects a proportional part of your life timeline. Starting with Env (affects your day) and ending with Vision (affects your life).
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1️⃣ Environment
- Subconsciously dictates your mental state for the day
- Can come in many forms → Workspace, friends & family, place where you live
- Sets the stage for anything that might follow
2️⃣ Daily Routine
- Acts like a blueprint for the perfect day, what does a day at a 100% look like?
- Gets better with iterating
3️⃣ Digital Systems
- A workflow that eliminates 5 minutes everyday = saves a few hours per week
- Multiple workflows throughout the day = save a few days per month!
- Efficient digital systems have to built from scratch, and for your use case
- Almost all successful people have systems in place
4️⃣ Goals
- They’re like KPIs but for life
- They’re just here for direction, not for an end
- A goal is the bridging gap between a dream & an action
*️⃣ Vision
- The grand sum of what you are about – Extremely personalized
- Almost doesn’t work if it wasn’t for each of the previous
Related:
23apr05 | World only fulfills when your vision is razor-sharp