The Lost Art of Focus

I have come to the realization that in America we have lost the ability to focus. In my everyday life there are more times than not that I literally miss out on conversations, or completely forget what I am saying because I have forgotten how to focus. I am not paying attention because I have fifty million things going through my head distracting me. Today everybody is expected to multitask. In work situations the average worker is expected to answer phones, monitor emails, deal with customers, and complete whatever type of work they do all in a matter of hours.

One of our main problems is that we are a society that is completely linked. At any given moment I am keeping up with text messages, emails, Facebook, IM, the weather, the news flashes and trying to do all of the above mentioned work. This level of awareness and sensory input ends up leaving me completely stressed out and exhausted by the end of the day, as well as feeling as if I accomplished absolutely nothing each night when I go to bed. This causes me to have way too many sleepless nights which only makes it more difficult the next day to keep up.

So my goal from here on out is to learn how to focus. I do believe that focus is a learned behavior in this high-tech era. I can’t decide if I really ever learned how. I guess as a child it’s easy to focus when your main goals are to play, clean your room (maybe), eat, bathe and sleep. I do remember living wholly and completely in those moments! I remember a time of no stress and few worries. Granted adulthood comes with a host of worries that a child never has to deal with, but I firmly believe that if I could learn to focus on one task at a time I would in fact get a lot more accomplished and feel genuinely happier. I recognize that so many of the tasks I start I never finish because I didn’t focus on the task and follow through with it until it was completed.

Starting today I am working on one task at a time to its completion, marking off my to-do list one at a time. If I only get 5 of the 25 things done at least that is 5 fully completed tasks, done well. I think I could be proud of that, rather than dabbling in 15 of the 25 and not really doing any of them well. I also am going to work on living in the moment a little more. I want to truly listen when my husband talks rather than checking my Facebook and mumbling yes here and there. I want to enjoy the time I write my blog rather than having it be something I do because I haven’t in awhile and it’s simply a way to mark it off my list. I also think it’s time to start expecting a little less of myself and others. I don’t have to answer every email, Facebook comment within 15 minutes. I don’t have to even answer every phone call (except at work). I don’t have to have a perfectly clean house. And, I need to remember that if I don’t have to do these things than neither does everyone else. For me life is going to become a little more about living it fully and enjoying it completely rather than just making it through the day!