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In Daniel Goleman’s book, Focus, states that realizing the strength or weakness of our attention is at the core of EVERYTHING we do! Therefore, he refers to our ability to focus as the “hidden driver of excellence.” You might recognize Daniel Goleman’s work in an earlier successful book titled, Emotional Intelligence.

I want to continue the discussion on Focus by examining by examining what he calls Smart Practice. He writes, “Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University Psychologist who spawned the 10,000 hour rule of thumb states that you don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution to arrive closer to your goal.” 

According to Professor Ericsson there are four (4) keys to purposeful practice. Keep in mind that we are discussing the ability to improve our Focus.

GOAL – We need to know how we would like to be able to perform on a high level. We need a specific goal for that training session. Success does not arbitrarily show up – we must move in the direction of our hopes and dreams.

FOCUS – During practice while moving in the direction of our dreams, we must be super-focused. Battling distractions is a full-time job as we previously stated. You must win this battle with intentionality. STOP DISTRACTIONS! Without focusing, you are not getting better!

FEEDBACK – You need immediate feedback on whether you are hitting your desired goal or not. How will you know what adjustments need to be made in your practice routine? Again this third aspect requires careful planning to get the proper feedback so that you can move in the direction of your dreams.

EXIT COMFORT ZONE – All growth occurs OUTSIDE your comfort zone. That is the only place where our body can adapt to the stress of leaving homeostasis (Leaving familiarity so that new skills can be learned. There are NO shortcuts in this process.

Before that we can even get better, we must believe that in fact we can get better! This requires that we see that in fact we can deliberately train our capacities to perform at extraordinarily high levels.

In closing, it should be recognized this type of training can only be sustained for 4 hours a day. Therefore, proper time to recover and rest is vitally important. Surfing the Web, answering text messages, looking at push notifications, and all of the other digital distractions are not appropriate methods of rest and recovery.

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