Have a clear, immediate goal. Know what you aim to accomplish over the next 30 seconds, and focus on doing a good job at it. That’s the short answer.
Playing my 30-second game in the kitchen today, I remembered how motivated and engaged I feel when I simply:
- know what I’m doing
- do it well
So often in life, I either don’t know what I’m doing or I feel as if my performance doesn’t matter. I become mentally scattered between multiple activities, even if technically single-tasking.
For example, I might know my goal is “to clean.” But if that’s all, I’ll wander around daydreaming, being slow, wishing I weren’t cleaning, oblivious to my steps. Cleaning is boring. It’ll get done regardless of whether I put any focus or energy into it, right?
How you approach one task tends to be how you approach everything.
In reality, I know I’m lying to myself. I can’t just tune out while I do my chores. Because when I finish and get to the fun stuff (AKA writing), I’m just as blueberry-scattered as before. Instead, I must practice being a universally focused person who brings mastery to every big or small task I choose.
First, I need to do a great job at preparing a washcloth. Then, at cleaning a single countertop. And when I pick up the vacuum, I want to want nothing in the universe but the wholehearted expression of my soul through perfectly cleaning a single section of the floor.
Maybe it’s just me and my undiagnosed attentional difficulties, but I need to be engaged in what I’m trying to accomplish in the next 30 seconds. Otherwise, my mind floats to the past, to the future, or to fantasies about sweaty construction workers outside my window.
I didn’t expect my latest lesson on focus to come while cleaning up after my green milkshake concocting. I drank some, started to clean up and suddenly became extra focused.
For a few brief minutes, I was ultra-engaged in everything I did.
The only thing in the world to worry about was that bag of baby chard, kale, and spinach. I thought, “I should avoid doing a lazy, non-airtight zipping job.” So I ran my fingers over the zip a second time just to be sure.
Returning the mixed greens to our spare fridge in the garage, I wondered how I could do a better job than usual. I curled the package to make it take up less space. I realized it was worth the extra couple seconds to put the greens in the drawer for extra coldness, instead of just dropping them wherever, so I did.
Yes, this was fun! Doing one thing at a time, poised posture, completely aware… Each tiny gesture of taking pride in my work was like collecting a gem in a video game. I just wanted to keep scoring more points and exploring this adventure world.
As I left through the laundry room to return to the kitchen, I did my mindful best with this step too, shutting doors and picking things up as I went.
The simplest actions felt immersive and meaningful, because they were immediate opportunities to do things slightly better than I otherwise would have.
Life should be way more addictive than video games, and concentration is key to making that a reality.
Just as I did during green milkshake cleanup today, I always want to be asking myself these two questions:
- What’s the next step?
- How can I do a great job at this?
What if, for an entire hour of activity, I could continuously renew my attention on the next 30ish-second mini-goal? Like a video game where the next tantalizing gem is always just a hop, skip, and a jump away. And never once during that hour losing focus, like when you’re a master at that video game and you’re on your last life.
That would be a stark difference from how I’ve normally operated over the years.
My big WHY for learning to concentrate is that I spent over a decade addicted to online games. I became better at what I did in the game than anything I did in the real world. Instead of saving imaginary JubJubs from drowning in the game Jubble Bubble, imagine the difference I could have made if I had volunteered those countless hours towards effective altruism.
Video games are great at simulating engagement, keeping us constantly absorbed in the immediate task at hand, which continuously changes as we advance through the cleverly designed maze or battle each subsequent opponent.
It’s time to make “boring” normal physical reality as constantly engaging as a game. Here are few possible applications for retraining how we think and respond, like blueberry-picking one bunch at a time:
- Shifting focus while walking or running: On a recent walk, I kept myself present by shifting my attention to a new theme every roughly 30 seconds. First, I focused on a nearby object until I passed it. Then, I focused on walking with better posture. Next, I focused on closing my eyes for a few seconds at a time to better feel my feet. After that, I focused on timing my “hello” to a neighbor I was passing, trying to make the greeting as smooth as possible. The game continued for some time, and it was blissful to be so absorbed.
- Coordinating attention with exercise reps: This is easy because most stretches and strength-training exercises are for very short intervals, as are the rest periods. Across different 30ish-second periods, I might focus on deepening into a given stretch as far as I can safely go, quitting after the perfect amount of time, noticing a part of my body I don’t always notice, breathing deeply, and so on. There are always different options for focus with which to enrich and entertain myself, but I try to choose one at a time for about 30 seconds.
- Remaining constantly present while writing: This one is more advanced. Writing being a mental, stationary activity involving the constant shifting of alphanumeric characters, I find constant awareness more difficult to maintain. However, brief practice has already increased the amount of time I write with a half-minute goal — such as finishing the current paragraph, rereading a certain section for typos, deciding on an edit, or uploading an image — at least loosely in mind.
We deserve to concentrate well, and we can learn from our laser-focused moments.
Have a short attention span? Work with it! Even if you’re scatterbrained 95% of the time, pay attention to that special 5% when you feel focused, present, clearheaded, functional, masterful.
How can you apply that laser-focused mindset you experience then to the other 95%?
My personal solution, again, is to practice chunking everything I do into 30ish-second mini-goals whenever possible. While the aim is not to entirely eliminate mind-wandering and daydreaming, which can serve valuable functions, simply shifting that 5–95 to even a 20–80 could cause a soar in productivity.
Whatever your journey with concentration, I want you to feel as powerful, capable, concentrated, productive, and self-actualized as possible. I’m 27 and am determined not to have “absentminded” and “daydreamy” be qualities that survive my 20s and follow me into my 30s.
It’s hard work to retrain decades of bad scatterbrained habits, but if we remind ourselves are and are consistent about practicing every day, we can get there over the coming weeks, months, and years.
While the 21st-century has emerged with many new concentration-training resources, even old books in the public domain such as The Power of Concentration by Theron Q. Dumont can be immensely inspirational and insightful on this journey. Free via Gutenberg (reading) and via LibriVox (audio).
We deserve to feel the way Mozart felt when he created masterpieces on the piano, or the way your dog feels when she chases after a ball to the best of her athletic abilities and runs back to you at full speed as if nothing else matters in the world.
We deserve concentration — and the world deserves it too. Because we know deep down we’re not going to contribute our full potential to human progress if we’re constantly flipping between 12 apps on our phone while feeling bored about life and internally protesting that doing those dishes in the sink can’t possibly be anything other than a torturous chore.
It’s time to gather those blueberries in one basket. Good luck, and good health!
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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