Greater Focus = Turbocharged Productivity - Power Productivity #3

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This post is the third in a series of increasing productivity. In this post, I discuss the importance of being a focused blogger, which leads to laser targeted concentration, which in turn is the key to turbocharged productivity. You’ll also learn of a technique to help you focus and concentrate. Read Part 1, Part 2.

what ever you may do to minimize interruptions, you can’t sit down and write a great post if your mind is muddled.

Productivity often does not come easy. In order to be productive, you have to concentrate at the task at hand for long and as religiously as possible, without being distracted by irrelevant elements, such as the urge to check out the meaning of a particular word, or to spell check what you’ve just written, or to check your email.

You can down size unnecessary interruptions by using a full screen editor alright, but what ever you may do to minimize interruptions, you can’t sit down and write a great post if your mind is muddled. Meaning to say, you can’t have a smooth drive on a road that is filled with bumps and guts.

In the same way, you cannot establish a strongly connected train of thoughts(the vehicle) if your mind(the road) is filled with road blocks(other, rascal thoughts).

So, what you need to do is to create a strong chain of thoughts that keeps on running for a long time, not just for a while. But before you can do that, you need to get those rascal, invader thoughts away which interrupt the smooth flow of your thoughts and ideas.

But, you may ask, what are those ‘rascal’, ‘invader’ thoughts anyway?

Anything that is unrelated or irrelevant to what you’re writing about now.

For example, if you’re writing about the use of a spoon in cooking, thoughts like what you dug up today in your back yard, what you did in school or in the office, et al. are rascal thoughts which are interrupting the path of the important, relevant thoughts and stop them from making you aware of their presence. So instead of thinking about the right way to hold a spoon, you end up thinking about the gold bucket you dug up earlier.

Not only do these rascal thoughts waste your time, they also accumulate over time, rather like bioaccumulation, and build up a huge mountain like barrier, which often results in what’s called blogger’s block.

An Exercise to Help You

I’ve found out(maybe invented? ) an exercise which helps me really target my focus, bulls-eye to where it is needed the most. And I’m going to share it with you.

It’s like those near-death experiences, where a person travels a long, dark tunnel, towards a sole, bright light, signifying the end of the tunnel.

First, close your eyes. Imagine you’re in a dark, black tunnel. It’s very dark. You see a bright, white light at the far end of the tunnel. Focus on that bright light. You start moving. The tunnel turns and twists, but you don’t let the bright, white light out of your sight.

Concentrate and focus on the bright, white light. Don’t let those rascal thoughts disturb you. Slowly and gradually, you will learn to keep those rascal thoughts safely out of the way of your concentration and focus. Even if some of these bad thoughts do come in your way, focus strongly, and they’ll run away.

But you may ask, what’s the point of the tunnel being dark? It is very important that it is so. Because, in a dark tunnel, there’s nothing for you to see, except that bright white light at the end. And when there is nothing to take your attention away from the bright white light, the light gets all of your undivided attention. Suppose your tunnel was made of gold and glittered brightly. You could have been thinking about the things you could do with all that gold, instead of the bright white light!

Also, this exercise requires all of your attention. So, it is not wise to do it during the day, when you might be at work and disturbances would be knocking at the door. Instead, do it at night, just before going to sleep; in your bed(or wherever you sleep ;)). You see, at night, you don’t have anything to do except sleep, so there’s probably nothing that’s going to disturb you.

Do this exercise everyday for about 20 minutes, and see your productivity shoot through the roof!

So, do you try any similar exercises to help you remain focused and concentrate? Please do tell the rest of us!

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