How to Focus Your Thoughts and Accomplish Great Work
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
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You may notice that it’s easier to enjoy a certain situation when in a good mood. You aren’t affected by problems as easily. This occurs because your focus is on something that keeps you happy.
Standing in line behind two young women, probably in their early twenties, at the grocery store and they were complaining about their boyfriends. Their groceries were on the conveyer belt waiting to be wrung up. They had bananas, a mango, strawberries, two types of cheeses and crackers. It looked like they were going to eat an amazing snack. They weren’t excited about this wonderful meal they were soon to make, but only worried about their awful boyfriends.
I was so focused on their conversation that I forgot about myself. I was judging them. I felt like they were whining too much. I was doing the same thing they were. I was judging them for only looking for the negative. I had glorious food about to be purchased too. This made me think about my focus at work. Some days my focus is about knocking the work out, so I can get home. This defeats the purpose of work. We aren’t meant to be robots. We were created to feel and be aware of our experiences.
Losing Focus
Last Sunday… I was so caught up in finishing my drawing of a flower with a human face on it talking to a dog about proper mouth hygiene that I missed the point of the exercise – fun, stress relief, and relaxation. Drawing is an enjoyable hobby, but sometimes I lose focus. I need to remind myself why I’m doing it.
As I was finishing my drawing I slowed down and let the moment sink in, the pure joy of creating a white sheet into a story. That’s when I had a mini revelation. I needed to relax my drive and use my focus to experience the moment and the feeling of being productive.
Relationships, Tasks and Emotions
When we’re mad at a co-worker or family member it’s all we can feel. We are so caught up in the hurricane of emotions that we forget that there are other emotions to be felt. By acknowledging the main emotion that is dominating at the moment we can learn to allow it to only suck so much of our energy. Moving the focus toward other parts of the experience we can process through the emotions faster.
Working on tasks is similar to relationships. A certain task may frustrate us, but it’s because we get too caught up in accomplishing instead of experiencing.
When we push ourselves to finish our task we are losing sight of the larger picture. We make more mistakes because we just want to be done with it. The people who allow themselves to experience the fun in the moment as well as knocking the job out will have an easier time being productive. They understand that they choose how to process the task.
Your Perspective
Most of us have seen two opposite types of people working side by side in a retail store. One is smiling and willing to go the extra mile while the other one wonders why she is tortured by life. They are really not that different, but one learned how to divide her time between finding the joy in the work, while the other one sees and endless sea of people who need, need, need.
Your career happiness will depend on your focus. You can choose to find ways to make the experience enhance your career or you can keep complaining that whatever you try only blows up in your face. Your career is all yours, keep your focus on enjoying the moment for what is, nothing more and nothing less, as well as the joy of being productive. You’ll take your work happiness to a level that will astound you and your co-workers.
Your Turn
When working on an email or finishing a report where is your focus? (i.e. finishing the email or getting to the next project)
How do you make time to enjoy the moment?
* Karl Staib is addicted to throwing Twitter Parties. If you want to learn how Twitter Parties can help your business grow click here. You can also follow Karl on Twitter and learn how to build your business by standing on other people’s shoulders.
* I loved this post, A Dick Tracy lunchbox gave me some decent advice, from Havi Brooks of the Fluent Self. The bonus part is it fits nicely with the theme of my post.
If you found this post insightful, you will probably like these too:
- Coworker Trust – Sometimes It’s Better to Give AND Receive
- What Elephants Have in Common with Gratitude
Image courtesy of Blue Square Thing
Concentration can lead us to better places and for sure, if we will put our whole heart and thoughts to a particular thing we will no doubt end up with the best accomplishments.
That sounds like a powerful insight, Karl — when you realized that the internal complaining you were doing about the girls’ complaining was the same attitude that you saw in them. I can get like that when I get criticized, and I’m thinking “how dare they criticize me! They must be bad people!” and then ideally I realize that I’m criticizing them too.
[...] How to Focus Your Thoughts and Accomplish Great Work “Most of us have seen two opposite types of people working side by side in a retail store. One is smiling and willing to go the extra mile while the other one wonders why she is tortured by life. They are really not that different, but one learned how to divide her time between finding the joy in the work, while the other one sees and endless sea of people who need, need, need. Your career happiness will depend on your focus. You can choose to find ways to make the experience enhance your career or you can keep complaining that whatever you try only blows up in your face.” ~Karl Staib at Work Happy Now [...]
The way I enjoy the moment is I reminder myself that right now, the moment is all there is.