Seasons of Focus In late 2022,
I went on a sabbatical.
I left my business on standby mode and traveled to India to focus exclusively on my personal and spiritual growth for three months.
Nothing else to think about,
No other problem occupying my mind.
I didn't even touch my work inboxes.
So much happened as a result of that season of focus and the sacrifices it required.
In a nutshell,
I can say that I had 3 years worth of growth in 3 months.
We read about such periods of exclusive focus in the biographies of many people.
I've seen it work wonders also in the lives of my coaching clients.
One of them,
Realizing that it was very difficult for him to gain momentum in his music career when he was also daily engaged in trading cryptocurrencies,
Decided to pause his trading for two months,
Get rid of his internet modem,
And exclusively focus on music.
At the end of that period of time,
He had improved his skill manyfold.
And had an album ready.
What would be possible for you if you plan a season of focus in your life?
Planning for Focus.
Life would be much simpler if we only had one thing to take care of.
One goal,
One project,
One area of life.
But that's not the case for the great majority of us.
We have multiple responsibilities,
Roles and different desires competing for our energy,
Time and attention.
Does that mean that we have to resign ourselves to living a distracted life with hectic schedules and a scarcity of time for deeper focus?
No.
But it does mean that we need to be very aware and purposeful about how we plan our life.
In the higher mind system,
The discipline of planning is the link between our aspirations and our actions,
Between what we want and what we do.
It is our attempt to bend reality in our favor,
Making our life an expression of our will.
Planning has many aspects.
In this blog,
We have covered planning your week,
Planning the path to your goals,
Organizing your environment,
Removing distractions,
Creating smart goals,
And having an effective morning routine.
This article,
I'll explore a more macro application of planning by unpacking the concept of seasons of focus.
Seasons of Focus.
When we try to advance many projects at the same time,
Or grow in several areas of life at the same time,
We necessarily fragment our attention.
Every additional thing that we add to our plate makes us less focused on everything else already on our plate.
Even if we have great self-discipline to maintain all the needed habits and activities for multiple goals on a regular basis,
It doesn't change the fact that we are not giving each goal the uninterrupted focus it deserves.
We're trying to operate in multiple threads at the same time,
As if we were computers.
But we are not computers.
We are humans.
And for humans there's a cost in switching contexts or threads.
It creates fiction,
And that's not optimal.
We should operate like nature,
Not like machines.
And from nature we can borrow the concept of seasons.
What would it look like if you functioned like nature?
You would have different seasons in your life,
Each with a particular focus.
Maybe there is a season for you to focus on an important project at work,
A swimming competition,
Raising a child,
Moving to a new home,
Intensively learning a new skill,
Writing a book,
Improving your health,
Or going deep in your meditation practice.
Thinking of your life in terms of seasons allows you to say a wholehearted yes to one thing for an extended period of time with fewer distractions.
This allows you to get more momentum in that goal,
To go deeper,
To connect the dots better.
You don't waste energy switching contexts all the time.
Instead,
There is one continuous context.
The result of all of this is that your path is smoother and you arrive at your destination sooner.
When that happens,
Then it's time to move to another season of Focus.
The problems with the all-at-once approach.
If,
Instead of focusing on a single project per season,
You try to do everything at once,
All your goals will take longer and you will experience much more friction in your path.
That's mainly because of two things.
First,
Every time you switch context,
You don't resume from where you had left.
The first several minutes of that activity are taken up by the task of reloading all that context into your mind.
That reloading is cognitively painful.
Which means that you are likely to procrastinate on taking action.
You want to avoid it.
Even if you don't,
When you come to the point where you're finally in the flow again,
You've already wasted some of your time and energy and are less excited about taking action.
The second reason why pursuing many goals simultaneously is not effective is that by doing so you are confusing your subconscious mind,
Which then becomes less useful for you.
Let me unpack that.
When your conscious mind is fully occupied with a single problem,
Project,
Or goal,
It is constantly planting seeds of that in the subconscious mind.
When your conscious mind then stops thinking about it,
The subconscious mind picks it up and starts connecting the dots.
That is why we often remember where we left our keys after we stopped thinking about it,
Have a brilliant solution to a problem when we are showering,
And better process what is going on in our lives when going for a walk.
But what happens if instead of having one thing to think about and solve,
You are bombarding your subconscious mind with 10 different things that you're trying to achieve?
The subconscious mind,
Overwhelmed by that noise,
Won't know what to focus on.
Therefore it won't connect the dots for you,
Nor give you flashes of inspiration and insight.
It has no ground and therefore no clarity.
How to implement seasons of focus.
Thinking in terms of seasons allows us to have the courage to focus fully on a single important goal.
We can pause all projects because we know that their time will also come.
This is an extension of the concepts of not now and the monk week of mindful self-discipline.
The key points about implementing this concept are 1.
Choose your focus What would be the one thing you would focus on for this season of your life?
Ideally to be something that is directly related to your aspirations or at least something that will help you prepare your life so that you can become more focused on them in the future.
Choose how long.
This could be time-based,
One month,
Six months,
Two years,
Or project-based,
Until I finish X,
Y,
And Z.
3.
Choose a start date.
Mark it on your calendar and give yourself enough time to prepare for it.
The preparation could involve ending certain projects,
Communicating boundaries with some people,
Finishing a given list of tasks before,
Saving money,
Or planning for a vacation.
During each season of Focus,
You have only one key project and goal.
You may not be able to stop everything else,
But you can at least leave them in maintenance mode,
In standby.
When I had a season of focus for the growth of my business in the early 2015,
I chose to stop all physical exercise,
Cut down my meditation practice in half and basically have no social life.
Those were my sacrifices.
Once certain milestones were reached,
Then I started bringing back all those other things.
But at that time,
My life was in another level,
And there was no going back to working a job not aligned with my purpose.
This is what a season of focus can do for you.
It lifts you to a new ground.
After that,
You can keep that activity in maintenance mode,
But you are unlikely to reach that higher ground by working on it little by little in the midst of 10 other things going on in your life.
Keep in mind that a season of focus has a limited duration and soon shifts into something else with a different focus,
Or an in-between season where you catch up with things.
Allow this recognition to ease the fear of missing out that you may experience.
Implementing seasons of focus requires great planning and great discipline,
Yet they bring tremendous benefit in our lives.
If you have reached a plateau in your life or in any of your goals,
It's likely that a season of focus is what separates you from the breakthrough you're seeking.
