Productivity Arata! I want to welcome you to our new weekly series, which airs every Monday with quick videos so we can boost your personal productivity. I am Seiiti Arata from Arata Academy, and we’re going to start by reviewing the work of Daniel Goleman, a psychologist from the United States who is famous for his work on emotional intelligence.
Today specifically let’s start with the book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Focus is essential reading, and you will find out why.
To get the best possible results from these videos, always keep a pen and paper to jot down ideas that we bring here. This will help you better absorb the ideas and experience positive changes. Deal?
So here comes the first big idea of this book:
The attention span is like a muscle. If left unused, it will weaken. With practice, it is strengthened.
This is a powerful idea, but it is still very abstract. In this video I’ll teach you a technique to develop your capacity for attention. Are you interested? If you want to go deep, I invite you to do our full course, but the tip I will give you now is the following:
When we dedicate our attention to anything, we are making a choice that has consequences.
This is a very valuable way to understand attention. Note that at any given moment we are in charge, making choices.
And to choose properly, we have to become aware of the consequences of our choices. We should accept the price we are paying.
This is very important: What is the price of the choices you have made?
Let’s give an example to illustrate: When I choose to devote my attention for twenty minutes to a television news programme, what do I expect to get as a result? What’s the price I’m paying? What other things could I have done and did not do because I chose these twenty minutes of television?
What if instead I choose to work out for twenty minutes? What different results will I have? Or if I devote those twenty minutes to studying a foreign language or any other topic that is important to my career?
The lesson of this video is: I choose where I focus my attention! Always.
Whenever I remember that my attention is determined by my choice, it helps me to remember that I want to be conscious in my decisions. It increases the quality of choices, and it strengthens my decision-making power.
Attention is a type of investment.
Have you ever thought about it from this perspective? Attention is an investment. And investments are different options with different results.
To stay with this analogy, take a look at the different ways in which we use money and the different consequences:
• If you have an amount of money in the bank, you can withdraw it and spend it all in a night of partying.
• You can also buy a car that seems like a bargain but in the end will cost much more money on maintenance.
• You can invest in high-risk shares in a company that can go bankrupt.
• You can leave the money in that savings account while inflation destroys its purchasing power.
• You can also use money to start a business and make profit.
Do you understand that there are different options?
In a similar way, attention is also a valuable resource, and we have different options for its use.
If we do not take control, life may lead us to undesired destinations because we were simply reacting to the demands of those around us, living the life others expected us to live …
… Or we can decide to take charge of things, going after what we really want, resisting the temptation to get lost in distractions.
We want to awaken the clarity to identify the good and bad choices. Some of our choices in life are equivalent to the cheap car that looks like a great opportunity, but in the end is a big problem.
If you are interested in increasing your focus, I have prepared for you an ebook that you can download now. There’s also a complete video course for those who want to take an additional step. To download the free ebook now you can go to: arata.se/ebookfocus
This link will redirect you to the Arata Academy blog, and then you can download the PDF of the ebook we prepared for you. As an option to further accelerate your results you can also take our course, FOCUS.
Let’s recap what we have learned: The attention span is like a muscle. If left unused, it will become weak. With practice, it is strengthened.
And how do we strengthen our attention span as we practise? By remembering that our attention is a CHOICE. And obviously a good choice is based on conscious examination of the cost and benefit of each option. Different attention choices, just like financial investments, can bring different returns.
When we remember this, our attention becomes more aligned with what we want from life, with what is really important to us.
I am Seiiti Arata, from Arata Academy and creator of the course FOCUS – use this link to download your gift now. Cheers!