Focus and its virtues

Sitting here on my chair and listening to the most peaceful yet immensely emotionally stimulating piano, I cannot help but wonder how incredible is the power of focus in life. When we are young, we are taught to perform every task with focus and complete engrossment. But as we age we realize that this is easier said than done. In today’s world we are bombarded with information from all around us, targeting each and every sense of ours. We have something called an pseudo-information overload. Going back at 50,000 years, we were hunter gatherers living in no more than few people per clan. The means of entertainment were scant and what we had was other humans, some form of art in cave paintings and campfires. The main mode of entertainment was storytelling and cooking, combined with some forms of ritual dances around the fire. In order for our species to survive and be so dominant that it is today was due to this main fact that we were always social creatures and these rituals increased our dependency on being one.

Fast forward to the 21^st century and we see that the species has spread on all lands, water, air and even slowly entering the territory of space. Yet how we are so lonely from deep inside. Numerically we are plentiful yet somehow when it comes to some social interaction we are all limited to the virtual social world (the era of facebook, whatsapp etc). Observing the fact that we are all so lonely, we must be achieving great progress in our professional lives, as recapitulating from school times, we were insistently instructed to have focus in life. And now since we have so less distraction we must be very productive. Except we are not! Ever wondered why?

In the world of constant notifications from friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and countless other people we might be not connected in real terms but virtually, we are always occupied. And if that was not enough we have The INTERNET (bringer of all evil in cute animals videos and gossip, reality tv shows and entertainment) we are always one click away, one browse away from everything that is currently happening in the world that might or might not affect us directly. We are so hooked up on it that like a heroin addict we need constant shots of the drug releasing dopamine in the brain which further fuels the stress hormones which the life brings that keeps us going on and thus creating a feedback loop.  

This is the current source of my fret and curiosity. Einstein once said: I am not a genius, but I stay with problems longer than normal people. Whenever I am stuck in a problem, whether that is related to programming or requires some logic based careful evaluation, I always remember this phrase from him. That how if we ever wish to truly make a difference, we sometimes need to stop all the vexing notifications and think hard and deep about the task at hand.

Countless studies have proven that people who are excellent at what they do and have made a name for themselves doing that like concert pianists, singers, programmers, athletes, writers, etc  had at some point in their lives to be focused at the task at hand with utmost determination without any kind of distraction. The secret to greatness is not just talent but rather an incessant trial and error combined with a fierce focus. It is that mental asset which rarely gets so much limelight in today’s world when it comes to measuring the variables of excellence.

It is easy to say that when we have so many devices or sources of distraction around us. One powerful tool that helps to achieve such a state is meditation and/or music. Meditation is the way of emptying one’s thoughts to bare minimal and at best none.  However counter intuitive it might sound in the beginning it is indeed the best way to calm down all the anxiousness and our working memory to focus on the important things in life. Music can too provide a way of reducing anxiety and flushing out unnecessary thoughts. Both in some way or the other help the mind relax, reduce the levels of stress hromones in our blood, and helps drive the attention on tasks with higher relevance. For example, if one wanted to learn a new language, dance form, musical instrument or even wanted to do something for a loved one. 

Some form of meditation not only helps to be more attentive but also works as a form of compassion driver (which we can really use a lot in today’s world but another post about it some other time). We all have the desire to stay connected to the world and be aware of our surroundings constantly. But it is necessary to slow down, take a step back and ask ourselves, do I really want to know about this? How does this affect my current state of being, am I looking for small shots of dopamine and losing out on the task that is at hand? Is there something important that I could be doing instead of this? Now I know asking all these questions is easy. Sometimes we even have an answer and still continue to do the same chores. The problem then is of effort and motivation and not understanding, which is another topic of discussion and is beyond the scope of this article. For now I will leave you will this thought and a quote from Blaise Pascal:

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”