Life of Focus #10

Week 10 of a Life of Focus concentrated on techniques to hone the skill of focus and projects to refine it and live a life worth living.

This weeks lessons were centred on how focus is a skill, and as such it can be trained and improved. To train your focus Cal and Scott advise three main techniques:

1. Productive meditation
2. Cognitive Interval Training
3. Reading hard things

In addition to constructing a focus training routine they highlight that a project-driven life where you emphasis mental strain as much as physical strain. This emphasis on projects and devoting yourself to interesting and important challenges is a rewarding and fulfilled life.

In Scott’s Ultralearning he uses the example of the renowned mathematician Ramanujan as an example of the benefits of retrieval. He also explores at why students are so bad at studying, when simply doing free recall and test exams is the proven best way to learn and study. It may be simply that they are uninformed or that they are choosing the easiest path.

This weeks deep work hours were 10. It wasn’t my best week, I was finding remaining undistracted particularly hard as I was waiting to hear back from a job interview. Which in the end I didn’t get. And thus the rest of the week suffered as I was out drowning my sorrows.

One small win would be I am getting better time block planning as each week passes.