First, care.

Merlin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:51:40 -0500

Asked and answered by the wonderful Frank Chimero:

Anonymous asked: 'How do you maintain focus (on work, dreams, goals, life)?'

You do one thing at a time.

You might be amazed how many times--and over how many years--a given person can ask this same simple question, hear that same simple response, and still find themselves casting about for the great and arcane "secret" to achieving real focus.

But, this is pretty much it. Mostly.

Although, I must add one important "Step Zero," borne of my own tedious experience.

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you're pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you've been unknowingly trying to "focus" on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don't really care that much about. Just consider it.

Because, in the absence of caring, you'll never focus on anything more than your lack of focus. Think about it.

Think about those times when you really disappeared into challenging work. You had to tear yourself away, right?

Because, during those happy times you were fortunate enough to find yourself engaged with something that you cared intensely about, you probably started asking a really different sort of question.

A more transitive, muscular question that shows you own the attention that others may see as a bowl full of complimentary Jolly Ranchers, free for the grabbing.

That's when you ask,

How many things do I need to shed, cancel, defer, drop, shank, or shit-can with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?

In my experience (yes, as I said, hard-won experience), obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil "distractions," and constantly reassessing which shiny new "system" might make your life suddenly seem more sensible--these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem.

Where's the care?

For as long as you know in your heart that what you're making or doing matters, and, consequently, for as long as you accept and embrace the immutable laws of scarcity, your options for maintaining focus will, like Frank's perfect answer, remain stunningly obvious.

You "focus" on the one thing you care about, as you "unfocus" on everything else. If not for every minute of your life, at least for the time you set aside to pursue the thing that matters.

If that sounds fancy and oversimplified, then you "care" about too many things. Period.

My suggestion? Own your distractions, resist fiddly half-measures, and never for a minute allow yourself to believe that productivity systems, space pens, or a writing app that plays new age music while you stare at a blank page in full-screen mode can ever teach you anything about how to care.

That's all on you.

So, first, care. Then, as you'll happily and unavoidably discover, all that "focus" business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself.

”First, care.” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 05, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)

Merlin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:17:46 -0400

Video: Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) - Vimeo [NSFW]
MP3, Audio Only: Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) [NSFW]

Here's a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it's also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

The video is long. As usual. This is how it works.

I'd had this fancy idea that I'd do a DFW-style dump of annotations about what I talk about over these 40 minutes, and I might add that later, but for now here's all you need to know:

Dish soap cleans dishes; Stuart Brown says everybody needs Play; Rands has a cave where he doesn't multitask; The Dreyfus Model has five stages; Andy Hunt wants you to Think & Learn Pragmatically; my pal, Sean Hussey helped me figure some of this stuff out.

And, oh, what the heck. Here's how to supercharge your zen turbocharger with "5 Surprising House Hacks!" [even more NSFW]

[Index Card Photo: Inbox Zero Tumblr]

”Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 22, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"