Category: Inspiration

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On Improving Your Focus

The dictionary definition of focus is the centre of activity, attraction or attention.

When people tell me that that they would like to improve their focus, I understand they are referring to the ability to maintain a narrow attention in a chosen direction, on a selected task for an extended period of time.

So it’s a narrow spread of attention for an extended period of time.

Whatever distracts you takes your attention off that on which you decided to focus. It widens your attention and shortens the time of it.

To the degree that you can control your thoughts you maintain your focus, you are in control.

To the degree that you cannot control your attention, you are not in control, you are at effect.

I want you to be maximally in control of your thoughts and focus.

This maximises your chances of attaining your goals nad helping others.

Setting The Stage

Our ability to concentrate is affected by our physical condition. So aim to be in optimum physical condition for maximally effective living and thinking.

Some important factors include:
– Sleep: Insufficient or poor-quality sleep impairs attention, working memory and decision-making.
– Exercise: Regular physical activity benefits cognitive function and can improve attention.
– Nutrition: Hunger, inadequate nutrition and large fluctuations in blood glucose can affect how well some people concentrate. (I read that intense thinking and memory can chew up 100 mg of B1 in 47 mminutes.)
– Hydration: Dehydration can impair cognitive performance, particularly when substantial.
– Stress: Excessive stress can consume cognitive resources that would otherwise be available for the task at hand.

External Distractions

The more opportunities you allow for external distractions in your working environment, the less you are able to maintain focus. For example:
– Mobile phone notifications.
– Incoming emails.
– People interrupting you.
– Background television or radio.
– Clutter in your working environment.
– Having multiple browser tabs open.
– Working in an environment where people expect immediate responses.

Before commencing a task, take a moment to eliminate as many potential external distractions as possible. Turn off unnecessary notifications, put your phone somewhere out of sight, and arrange your environment so that you can concentrate on the task without interruption.

Don’t Multi-Task

When you look at the desired objective, ‘maintaining a narrow spread of attention for an extended period of time’, you instantly realise that multi-tasking is the exact opposite of that.

If there is something more important than the task at hand on which you need to put attention as soon as it occurs, then recognise that is the opposite of focus and accept the trade-off.

For all other potential interruptions, aim to handle them at a time interval that suits your attention span.

The ability to focus could be described as the ability to do what you are doing when you are doing it, despite invitations to do otherwise.

This can be overdone. After all, Nero continued to play the fiddle while Rome burned. But catastrophes requiring urgent attention are by far the smallest number of distractions you will encounter.

Time Limiting

People have different lengths of time for which they can maintain optimum focus. And different times of day during which they are most alert. Learn your time of day and optimum time length for maximum focus and schedule your high value activities during your peak performance windows, taking a break to recharge your hydration/food and think of something else for a few minutes. Some of the greatest discoveries and realisations have occurred away from the work bench during just such breaks.

Internal Distractions

There are three ways to increase your cause level over internal distrations.

The basis of these strategies is the recognition that there are different parts of your mind. The mind is not your brain, it is function rather than a structure. In this article I will very briefly touch on two of the major functions of the mind.

The first is that part of the mind with which you are reading this and calculating, that with which your decide your goals in life, that is intelligent, kind, creative, logical, ethical, communicative, in fact, anything good.

The other part of the mind is the accummulation of everything bad that has ever happened to you. Every physical and emotional pain, loss, betrayal, invalidation and failure.

Because it is a function, not a structure, you cannot see it. You only feel its effect. It is what causes you to feel ‘down’, to feel distracted and to lack focus.

When you feel ‘up’ it is because the gears from the sum of your pain are disengaged from your thinking. Your mood is good, you feel happy, you do not invalidate yourself and others, you think well of others, you contemplate goals, you think positively.

You are happier and more successful the more ‘up’ you feel.

The three non-exclusive ways to increase your cause level are:

1. Is to eradicate the source of the distractions to your focus. That is optimum but it is not a quick and easy solution. It takes education, time and commitment. The discussion of it is too large for an article. It is a whole book. If you want to pursue the path to the highest possible cause level, get in touch with me.

2. Is to learn to disengage that part of the mind from which the distractions emanate so it has less effect on your thinking. One of these techniques is to go for a walk and look at things until you feel better. This is so therapeutic it has been called a near cure-all.

3. Is to learn and apply administrative and organisational techniques that increase your cause level over the source of distractions.

Because:
-they are able to be immediately implemented,
-cost nothing but a bit of effort,
-you will benefit from them while doing 1 and 2,
the administrative and organisational technique is the easist to implement. Let’s start there.

It is a lot harder to maintain focus on a vague, generalised concept than it is on a clear, precise target.

That makes the first action in improving focus to have a very clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish, the product of your efforts.

So formulate a clean, clear, concise statement of whatever it is you want to accomplish.

The next step is to identify why you want to accomplish it, your motivating desire. This beefs up your intention to attain the target which helps maintain the focus for longer.

Now you know what you want to accomplish and why, the next action is to work out the sequence of actions that will lead to its accomplishment and the product of each of those actions. This is called a sub-product list. This further narrows the spread of attention to only that specific action you are doing right now and its intended product.

You can practice doing this by making a list of the resources and sequence of actions you need to make a cup of tea or coffee.

Now you know the what, why and how of accomplishing your target. This gives you exactly on what you need to focus, one action after another.

This has not addressed that part of the mind from which resistance to you being successful emanates. So counter-intention (intention counter to your intention) can still manifest.

When you are concentrating on the task at hand you may receive a distracting thought. If you allow yourself to think on that, you become distracted and lose focus on what you want to accomplish.

On occasion you will think of something that you need to do, something you may have not documented. In this case it is perfectly acceptable to quickly make a note of that for later attention. That removes the necessity to hold it in mind so you don’t forget it, which would iteself be a distraction.

So whenever you are wanting to remain focused yet start to think of something else, the technique to apply is to revert your attention, to deliberately resume focusing again on the task immediately in front of you.

You do not need to spread your attention over all the future actions you need to take to accomplish your overall objective, just the action on which you are currently engaged.

There is a humerous yet true saying that just because someone invites you to an argument, it doesn’t mean you have to attend.

We just take that principle and apply it to distractions. Just because a thought enters your mind, it does not mean you have to entertain it.

Often times after you return to thinking of the task at hand the distracting thought comes back. In which case you just return your atttention to the task immediately in front of you.

You may have to do this multiple times. Sometimes dozens of times. But as you continue to apply this, the distracting thoughts reduce.

For many people, this will seem strange.

When we are practicing a physical skill we are used to the idea of doing the action time and again, practicing doing it until we are competent at that brushstroke, musical chord, or footwork technique.

Rarely does someone explain to us that mental techniques also require practice to acquire competence.

But if you thing back, repetition is how we learned the alphabet, our times tables etc.

Think of this technique like building a focus muscle, the more your practice it, the stonger it gets.

Unfortunately the opposite is also true. The more you allow yourself to be distracted, the weaker the focus muscle gets.

Exercise

The whole secret of improving focus is contained in choosing to build that focus muscle. Here is a practical exercise to assist with that.

A daily five-minute focus exercise
1. Decide on something you want to accomplish.
2. Write down precisely what you want to achieve.
3. Identify the first action required.
4. Remove potential distractions.
5. Spend five minutes doing nothing other than that action.
6. Whenever your attention wanders, deliberately return it.
Repeat daily, gradually increasing the exercise time.

I hope this helps.

To your health, fitness and happiness.

Tom Grimshaw
tom@tomgrimshaw.com

Further ‘Living Your Best Life’ resources:

How To Work Out Your Basic Purpose In Life:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=37862

Boosting Your Confidence:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67246

On Bringing Order:
https://www.bringorder.info/English.html

Cultivating Life: Growing Food Sustainably:
https://www.seedtotable.com.au

How To Handle Depression – 7 Step Mini Program And Additional Steps
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=14412

My book ‘How To Live The Healthiest Life’:
https://howtolivethehealthiestlife.com/

Patience & Compassion:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67462

On Finding your Perfect Match:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=39010

Addressing Procrastination:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67238

How To Boost Self-Discipline:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67086

A 4 Tier “Systems Health Triage” Model:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=65233

Effective Time Managment:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67285

Vaccination Data and References:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=3835

Return to Wellness Protocol – Your A-Z Guide to A Complete Mind and Body Reset:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=64583

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In Praise of Competence

DHL Airbus and Crew

(Tom: Nothing like personal and team mate competence to increase your survival chances!)

On November 22, 2003, a DHL Airbus A300B4-203F, registration OO-DLL, departed Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, bound for Bahrain. The aircraft was carrying mail, and its three-man crew expected an otherwise routine cargo flight.

Just over three minutes after takeoff, while climbing through approximately 8,000 feet, a surface-to-air missile struck the aircraft’s left wing.

The explosion caused extensive structural damage, ignited leaking fuel and destroyed the aircraft’s hydraulic systems. Within seconds, all three hydraulic circuits had lost pressure, leaving the pilots without conventional control of the ailerons, elevators and rudder.

The situation was extraordinary. The aircraft could no longer be controlled using its normal flight controls, and there was no established emergency procedure for recovering from such a complete hydraulic failure.

In the cockpit were Captain Éric Gennotte, First Officer Steeve Michielsen and Flight Engineer Mario Rofail.

Rather than give up, the crew began experimenting with the only controls that remained available: the engine throttles.

They discovered that adjusting the thrust of both engines could influence the aircraft’s pitch, while applying different amounts of thrust to each engine could produce the directional changes needed to manoeuvre.

It was an extremely difficult process. The aircraft responded unpredictably, and the damaged left wing created an additional imbalance that made maintaining a steady flight path even more challenging.

The crew gradually learned to manage the crippled aircraft.

As the emergency continued, the captain ordered the landing gear to be extended using the emergency gravity-extension procedure. Flight Engineer Mario Rofail operated the system manually. The deployed landing gear created additional drag, helping reduce the aircraft’s excessive airspeed.

The crew then began working their way back towards Baghdad International Airport.

First Officer Steeve Michielsen assisted with navigation, monitoring altitude and distance while Captain Gennotte continued manipulating the engine throttles. Meanwhile, Rofail monitored the damaged wing’s fuel supply and handled radio communications.

After approximately 25 minutes from the missile impact, the aircraft approached Runway 33L.

The landing was anything but normal.

With no conventional directional control, the Airbus touched down at approximately 220 knots, far above its normal landing speed. It immediately veered off the runway and continued across the sandy ground.

The crew used reverse thrust, while the soft sand helped slow the aircraft. It eventually came to a stop after travelling approximately one kilometre.

The three crew members escaped alive. One sustained a minor cut from razor wire during the evacuation, but there were no serious injuries.

The Airbus was too badly damaged to fly again and was ultimately written off.

The incident became one of aviation’s most extraordinary examples of crew resource management, improvisation and human adaptability.

It demonstrated something remarkable: even after losing every hydraulic flight-control system, a large commercial aircraft could still be brought back to the ground through exceptional teamwork and the careful management of engine thrust.

Three crew members. One crippled Airbus. No conventional flight controls. One extraordinary landing.

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Clint Eastwood Retires

Clint Eastwood Retires

There was no farewell speech. No press conference. No final bow on a red carpet. Instead, the news came softly, the way his best scenes always did. His son Kyle, a jazz musician who composed music for nine of his father’s films, said it simply in an interview: “Now he’s retired.”

Clint Eastwood, 96, had stepped away from the camera.

Think about how far that road stretched. He started with small roles in the 1950s. He became the silent stranger of the Westerns, the man who barely spoke but owned every frame. Then came Dirty Harry, and a whole generation learned the meaning of a hard stare.

Many stars would have stopped there.

He didn’t.

In 1971, he stepped behind the camera for the first time. Over the next five decades, he directed around 40 films. Not a hobby. Not a side project. A second career that grew bigger than the first.

‘Unforgiven’ won him Best Picture and Best Director.

Then came the part nobody predicted. More than a decade later, at 74, ‘Million Dollar Baby’ won him both again. ‘Mystic River’, ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’, ‘Gran Torino’, and ‘American Sniper’ followed, all from a man most people expected to slow down long before.

Here’s where the story becomes almost unbelievable.

His final film as a director, ‘Juror #2’, arrived in 2024, when he was 94. He didn’t attend the premiere. He didn’t do interviews. He let the work speak for itself, as he always had.

And maybe that is the real lesson of his career.

He never chased noise. He showed up, did the work, finished on time, and moved on to the next story. Age was never the finish line. Passion was the fuel.

When the time came to rest, he didn’t announce it with a speech.

He left the stage as quietly as the stranger who rides out of town at the end of the film.

So no grand goodbye. Just a long road, well traveled, and a horizon glowing gold.

At 20-something, he was a young actor taking small roles. At 94, he was still directing.

Thank you for the stories, Mr. Eastwood.

You don’t need a grand goodbye. You just need to do the work so well, for so long, that the work says everything for you.

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Quote of the Day

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein – Physicist (1879 – 1955)
I recently saw a video on X wherein a person lamented the rise of a whole class of educated people who did not know from where they came, why they were here, their basic purpose and where they were headed.
The people who question these fundamentals are rare in the extreme.
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J K Rowling On Gender

J K Rowling On Gender

J.K. Rowling has managed to turn a debate about language, biology, and gender into another internet firestorm, and apparently, the author who gave us Hogwarts has no plans to retire from controversy. A quote attributed to her uses everything from hot dogs to pantomime horses to argue that words don’t always mean what they appear to mean. Leave it to the internet to turn a grammar lesson into a political argument before anyone even reaches the final sentence.

Rowling’s position on biological sex and gender identity has drawn strong reactions for years.

Supporters argue that biological differences matter in discussions about women’s rights, sports, and protected spaces. Critics argue that her comparisons dismiss transgender identities and oversimplify (Tom: Truth is simple, lies complicate things.) a subject involving real people’s lives. Meanwhile, social media continues its proud tradition of turning complicated debates into shouting matches where everyone has a microphone and nobody can find the mute button.

Perhaps the strangest part is watching the woman who wrote seven books about magic become one of the internet’s most debated voices on definitions. Hogwarts had moving staircases, talking portraits, and an entire class devoted to defending against dark forces.

Somehow, discussing the meaning of a single word in the real world has become even more chaotic. At this point, the Sorting Hat would probably request early retirement.