The zen of focus
Tags: focus, productivity
Published: 2022-06-30 19:35:38

After a long time without writing, I wrote an article in Portuguese regarding what changes I introduced in my life and the many attempts to improve it. In a quick summary of the article, I spoke about changes I've made in my routine, like waking up earlier, having a proper sleep routine, and whatnot. This article is somewhat a continuation of that, where I will talk about something I've spent quite some time and enjoyed a lot: _meditation_.

## The start of the journey

Two years ago, I started my first attempts with it, using an app called _Headspace_, I've tried for a few months, and the experience was great.

I struggled in the beginning. I couldn't find a comfortable position to sit down without feeling pain in my back. Ten minutes felt like an eternity to me. 

I've always been a bit too anxious, and sitting down for ten minutes without doing anything? _Impossible_, I said to myself. But would I be beaten by a ten minutes process in my day? Not a chance. I decided to trace a plan, one week doing 5 minutes, next week I should be able to do ten minutes without worries. And to my great surprise, everything went great! I could keep up with those 10 minutes a day for a long time.

However, I wasn't finding the value for the cost I was having. I was paying around 12 euros per month, which was a bit too much. I tried a few playlists on Spotify, and even Headspace has some good guided meditations there. After a while, I gave up. But I got lucky, and the company I work for decided to start giving it to us as a benefit during the pandemic to help us cope with the lockdown. 

I picked up the routine again, going from 5 to 20 minutes a day of meditation. And I will be honest with you. Meditating helps me a lot to cope with reality. It helped me through the covid pandemic (two people living in a 30m2 apartment for one year and a half) and keeps helping me nowadays. When I have a streak without meditating, I can feel the difference: my patience and focus are jeopardized after just a couple days without practicing. It also reduces the quality of how I can process events that happen to me in a daily basis (according to my therapist).

But the main question is, why I'm telling all these things? After around 100 hours of meditation, I was intrigued by what it was doing to me. Even my psychologist said I could reflect better and be more reasonable. So, I decided to study a bit about it.

I picked an author I like a lot: Daniel Goleman. I picked him because he had a book on a subject that I felt that was directly impacted by meditating, my focus. So, I've dug up his "Focus - The hidden driver of excellence" book, which has some interesting explanations on mindfulness and meditation.

## Learnings

The so-called "mindfulness" practice can offer different benefits according to the author, which states: that it "boosts the classic attention network in the brain's frontoparietal system that works together to allocate attention. These circuits are fundamental in the basic movement of attention: disengaging your focus from one thing, moving it to another, and staying with that new object of attention".

That's how it feels after a while. After practicing for some time, you start to be able to focus on your breath, isolating undesired thinking patterns, and avoiding scattered thoughts. Whenever I struggle with my brain being 100km/h, I know where I have to go: inhale, exhale.

This is one of the things I've heard the most in my guided meditations. Whenever you feel your thoughts wandering, focus on your breathing. It's the key factor to calming down and going back to a place of attention.

Yet, another benefit I'd never heard of before reading his book was "meta-awareness, attention to attention itself, as in the ability to notice that you are not noticing what you should and correcting your focus.". After reading this passage, I've reflected upon my own experience reading the book. How many pages did I "read" when I was thinking about something else? Maybe something that happened at work or a bill I had to pay? 

When I brought this subject to my therapist, she actually asked me to be mindful of doing basic things. For instance, paying attention to the flavor of whatever I ate, or when I was simply taking a shower. "Take your moment when chewing your food, appreciate it. When taking a shower, enjoy the water, the feeling of being clean after it.". 

The realization I had was that paying close attention to these small things will bring even more joy to life and will improve your overall happiness significantly. 

Of course, this article doesn't intend to state that you should be focused all day long. A wandering mind is a place of creativity, while it also "operates in the service of solving problems that matter for our lives.". 

This was a mere invitation for you to give it a shot. Five minutes the next couple of weeks before work or during your lunch break. See how it goes. The worst it could happen is feeling like you didn't watch one or two episodes of your favorite series. You can start with [this one](https://open.spotify.com/track/7tnesh1ClZdJgJLP1H0ea3?si=1d0a5f35fb104940), if you want. Here's a free [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWVS1recTqXhf?si=cf748c9281e14acd) as well.

_And always remember, focus on your breath :)_

## References

Goleman, Daniel. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

"Zen" by Hipnosapo Peres is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.  (Cover)