Focus
Things you focus on get precedence.
You can spend all day at a picnic swatting flies.
Therefore, if you don’t make something a priority, it never gets done. Instead, you end up getting distracted, spending all day shooing flies away.
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The world outside clamors for our attention. We need to set limits on our time and attention if we want to do important things. Focus is a superpower that allows us to get things done.
Most big problems can’t be solved in one sitting. They need many steps and many sessions to get to a solution. You need a period of intense effort followed by a short break. This helps you to recover your energy, prevent mistakes, and see things from a different perspective. Big accomplishments are often the cumulative result of many tiny contributions added together.
Writing helps you to dismantle problems by revisiting them. It helps you transform a vague desire into precise instructions. It channels your time and energy on one thing. When you drive the same road over and over, you start to notice tiny details you missed earlier. You observe more, picking up more details. You start to know the road. You pick up on the tiny nuances that were there all along, but previously imperceptible.
Focus is like the vision a sculptor has while carving a statue. It is a tool that the powerful employ, a force that cuts away and discards the inessential. Each draft chisels away another layer, slowly revealing the finished form.
Focus is your unwavering desire to bring the shape out into the open, giving it shape and form. We all have this power latent within us.
What will you design today? What’s at the top of your mind?
