I will tell you how to focus when it is hard for you to focus. I will give you a big secret to the Art of Focusing on what you don’t really want to focus on and yet it has to be done. Or, you may even have a project you really do want to do, to start knitting a sweater, for example. You have a good time picking out a pattern, the yarn you want, the color you want and so on, and, yet, somehow you can’t get yourself to start knitting the sweater.
Perhaps you find yourself putting off filling out an income tax form, or you have to write an essay for school, or you have to clean out a closet. You just haven’t been able to make yourself stay with it. You find something to distract you. You amble away from it. For whatever reason, the project looms large before you. If your project would have been to pick up your winnings from the lottery, you would have had the energy to toddle yourself over to pick it up or whatever a person has to do to receive the winnings.
You might really want to get your hands on straightening out that closet, and yet you find you just can’t seem to get to the point where you start. It’s possible you are thinking it’s a big task. You might surprise yourself and find it doesn’t even take an hour. Many tasks, when you get down to it, may not take as long as you may have thought.
And, if the task is as big as you think, maybe you can whittle it down into two segments. What a breeze it becomes! You may even find yourself completing the whole project without much ado. It was not the project that zapped your energy. It was all the delaying that wore you out.
Here is a rule of thumb I have observed. The longer it takes you to settle down to a project, large or small, simple or complex, whether the task is your choice or not, the project becomes heavier and heavier, and it takes you even longer! The quicker you settle down to the project, the shorter it takes. If you had settled down to it at the beginning, it would already be done by now.
I have not yet come to the secret, however.
If the task concerns your income tax, perhaps you are afraid you will have to turn over a good sum to the IRS. If it concerns school work, perhaps you are afraid your essay won’t be any good. Fear of failure may haunt. Sometimes fear of success scares you. Even the closet you want to straighten out, maybe the thought of other closets that will have to be taken care of after this one, is what may weigh you down.
There is indeed something that holds you back, or the project would have been done by now.
Perhaps you think too much. Even a small project grows bigger when you keep picturing it and imagining the steps involved. You may empty your kitchen wastebasket every day without a thought about it. If you previewed every act emptying the small kitchen trash bags takes, it would become a big project as well:
1. Take the cover off your kitchen wastebasket.
2. Pull out the plastic bag that holds the trash.
3. Tie a knot on top of the bag.
4. Go down the flight of stairs.
5. Open the door.
6. Go through the door.
7. Walk a short distance to the large trash bin.
8. Unscrew the cover of the large bin.
9. Drop your kitchen trash bag into the bin.
10. Screw the bin cover back on.
11. Walk back to the door.
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12. Open the door.
13. Walk into the house.
14. Close the door.
15. Climb the stairs.
16. Wipe out the bottom of your kitchen wastebasket.
17. Find a new bag.
18. Put the new bag into the kitchen wastebasket.
19. Put the cover back on.
Now the secret. Sit down right now and get to it, whatever it is. If you want to know how to focus, you just focus, and you focus right now. This is the secret. This minute you start, you are half-way home. No more putting it off. Soon enough, you will be done. The secret is to get started, as if you didn’t already know that!