Focus: The Art of Clear Thinking E-Book

Valerie Pierce

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 204

Beschreibung

Focus is natural. We are born with an instinct to focus on exactly what we want and a very strong pair of lungs to help us to get it. Then, somewhere along the way, we begin to lose that focus. In the digital age we are bombarded with information from all angles and live our lives at such a breakneck pace that it sometimes seems that our lives are completely out of our control. In three easy steps this book teaches the reader how to regain control through the art of clear thinking: 1) FOCUS eliminate information overload 2) TRANSFORM negative thinking into positive action 3) THINK CLEARLY in the moment The author shows how you can use this strategy to achieve your goals in work and in life.

Leseprobe

In Memory of my Mother’s Magic

One of Short Influence with Long Impact

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd

Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.ie

http://twitter.com/IrishPublisher

http://www.facebook.com/mercier.press

© Valerie Pierce, 2014

© Illustrations: Alan Clarke, 2014

ISBN: 978 1 78117 204 9

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand.

The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Alexander Graham Bell

Contents

Part 1 Focus: Why Bother?

1 Beginning at the Source

2 Why Do We Find It so Hard to Focus?

3 A Simple Model for Success

Part 2: Applying the Model

4 Your First Steps

5 Your First Learning Curve: Passion

6 Your Second Learning Curve: Productivity

7 Your Third Learning Curve: Perseverance

8 Peak Performance: Using your Power

Answers to Quizzes

Acknowledgements

Practical Assistance and Follow-Up

Also available from Mercier Press

About the Author

About the Publisher

Part 1 Focus: Why Bother?

1 Beginning at the Source

I was four and a half years old when I learned to focus in the dark without being afraid.

Focus fights your Fears

I was six, almost seven years old, when I learned how exciting it felt to focus on challenging myself to succeed.

Focus is Fun

I was eight years old when my mother, who showed me these lessons, died … and it was at eight years of age that I realised, with the wonderful support of a strong and loving father, I could carry these lessons with me for the rest of my life.

Focus is Forever

Focus is natural: we are born with an instinct to focus on exactly what we want and a very strong pair of lungs to help us get it. Then, somewhere along the line, as we grow up and life gets complicated, many of us begin to lose that focus as we become overwhelmed by choice and information. We can lose that essential skill which we need to achieve what we want, when we want it.

The art of Clear Thinking is the skill to be able to see what you want and Focus is the ability to develop the strength of willpower, self-discipline and intellectual savvy to achieve it.

So how do we do this? Let me first tell you these stories from my early experiences by way of illustration, before we begin the task of learning what type of thinking techniques and skills you will use to achieve successful Focus.

Let’s start with the first story.

Focus fights your Fears

I remember as a small child being terrified to walk across a very large landing in our house in the dark, something that was necessary for me to do to get from my bedroom to the bathroom. To help me to overcome my night-time fear, my mother very gently and deliberately made me focus on each piece of furniture on that landing in daylight. We touched each item and noticed where they were positioned – the telephone table, the chair, the chest of drawers, etc. We also focused on the railing of the stairway and the two steps I had to walk over to reach the bathroom. Then, at night-time, with the light off, we went through the same routine of touching the same furniture and noticing the placement of all the items I would meet on my way to the bathroom.

Then in the dark, my mother asked me to focus on the fact that everything we touched and felt was exactly the same as it was when I could see it in daylight. ‘There, you see,’ I remember her saying. ‘Nothing has changed on this landing. Everything is the same, both in daylight and in the dark. If you are not afraid to walk through this landing in the daytime – and I know how much you love playing here with your friends – then there is no need to be afraid at night-time, because this space is exactly the same. The only thing that has changed here is you. It is your fears that are making you afraid, not the landing; there is nothing to be afraid of once you know your way. You know you can be safe.’

I remember those words always – there is nothing to be afraid of once you know your way, once you focus on your direction. Thinking clearly and with a solid focus on our goals helps us to achieve our desires.

Of course, as an adult, I realise I was no longer frightened in the dark because something had changed in that scenario – my perception of my situation. I now understand that in the daylight I felt in control as I could see where I was going; in the dark I lost that control because I could not. So Clear Focus and knowledge of where we are going helps control our emotions in a useful way – conversely, lack of focus and lack of direction can evoke destructive emotions, such as fear, that can hinder our way. The lesson is that there is no need to be frightened of your own perceptions. We can control our awareness, our beliefs and how we make sense of a situation, so that our thinking and feelings can work for us and not against us. The aim of this book is to show you how.

Focus is not always associated with hard work and tough feelings. It can also give us some of the greatest pleasures in our lives, and can be fun. By way of illustration let me tell you how I learned this at the tender age of almost seven years, with my second story of motherly wisdom.

Focus is Fun

I call this ‘The Story of the Stones’.

At the front of our house was a lovely gravelled garden. I remember as a child sitting on the window ledge enjoying the warmth of the sun while creating designs in the pebbles with my feet. It was one of my favourite places to sit and watch the world go by on our village square.

One day my mother began to play a little game with me: to see how long it took me to fill a small biscuit tin with pebbles. The idea was to put a stone into the box only whenever I overcame a particular challenge or ‘an act of self-denial’ as she called it. Looking back, this was an excellent way to teach a child ‘delayed gratification’, an essential requirement for success in adult life.

In fact you may well know the story of the ‘marshmallow’ experiment in the 1960s, in which scientists at Stanford University, USA, tested the willpower of a group of four-year-olds in the following experiment. Mischel and his colleagues presented the four-year-olds with a plate of treats such as marshmallows, saying that the researcher had to go out of the room for a few minutes. Each child was then given a simple choice: if s/he waited until the researcher returned, s/he could have two marshmallows. If s/he simply couldn’t wait, s/he could ring a bell and the researcher would come back immediately, but s/he would only be allowed one marshmallow.

The researchers discovered that those who were able to delay gratification at four years of age were more successful in later life because they had learned the life skill of developing their willpower to succeed in overcoming difficult tasks on the way to achieving their goals.1

My mother’s game was something similar and I loved it. Every day I couldn’t wait to put more pebbles in the box. I thought up loads of challenges and then ran through them with relish. I didn’t eat that bar of chocolate I so wanted. I ran errands when I didn’t want to. I helped around the house. I did anything that was a challenge for me just to win at the game of filling up the box with those little stones. I discovered in myself an intrinsic motivation to win and to reap the reward of my mother’s joy at recognising my achievement. By focusing on challenges and difficulties in this positive way, my mother was teaching me the value of being able to turn a negative or challenging situation into a good experience that produces positive actions.

Perhaps it is good to pause here and relate this thinking to the business organisations we work in today and to focus on the reason why ‘intrinsic motivation’ is thought to be one of the most essential components of a successful company.2 Where workers are intrinsically motivated to overcome challenges, and more importantly when they are recognised publicly by their immediate superiors for a job well done, businesses flourish.

To return to my childhood story, not only was this game of ‘filling the box with stones’ a good way of training my willpower to be a strong and flexible muscle for future challenges, it also showed me that I thrived on challenge. I learned that if I focused on a challenge in a certain way, as a game, I could win and enjoy winning, instead of becoming depressed over difficulties, and that problems could be overcome and not be overwhelming.

I realised that another important lesson of Focus is: it is not enough to know what you need to focus on to be successful, it is even more important to understand how you focus and how the way you focus can be very beneficial.

Focus is Forever

I have never forgotten these lessons from my mother. She died one year later, when I was eight years old, but thanks to being wrapped in the strength of a loving and giving father, I was able to sustain my interest in developing the skills of Clear Thinking and Focus to achieve success for both myself and others.

Over twenty-five years later, while studying for a PhD in philosophy, I created many of the techniques in this book. I now wish to offer these to you in a way and style that will make it easy to recognise your own innate abilities – perhaps learned from your parents or grandparents also – so that you can articulate them to achieve what it is you strive for at this point in your life.

Having Clear Focus means being able to think clearly from our desires to our decisions. But first we need to be able to answer the question: why do we find it so hard to focus?

1 H. N. Mischel and W. Mischel, ‘The Development of Children’s Knowledge of Self-control Strategies’, in Child Development 54, 1983, pp. 603−19.

2 T. Amabile, ‘How to Kill Creativity’, Harvard Business Review, September 1998, pp. 77–87.

2 Why Do We Find It so Hard to Focus?

While born with the strong ability to focus clearly on what we need to survive as infants, very often as adults we find it difficult to know what to focus on in our lives and how to focus. Furthermore, even when we desperately want to achieve something, we often lose the focus that is so necessary for our success.

Why do we find it so hard to retain clear direction in what we do? We can all see that our fears and inability to work with difficulties can pull us down and outweigh our commitment to succeed. But do you notice that you can sometimes give up on what you want because, perhaps, you simply believe you can’t get it? Or you might just tell yourself that you don’t really want to achieve your goal. So belief and genuine need are two qualities which are necessary to help us remain focused on what we want.

I am going to concentrate on the kind of Clear-Thinking skills that we need to achieve Focus and I am going to take it for granted that you will bring these two qualities of your personal belief and genuine need to succeed to sustain your Focus as you read. That doesn’t mean that you have to achieve everything you want right now, or that you have to read this book in one sitting. I hope you will be able to dip in and out of it when you require a little refocus and that it will be the right tonic for you when you need to get back on the road again, as well as being the type of reading material that will also allow you to rest a little in between tasks.

I am assuming that if you are reading this book you really want to focus on achieving your ambitions and you believe in your abilities to succeed (most of the time anyway!). I will assume that as we work through the thinking techniques, there may be distractions as well as illuminations. I hope you will discover that there are easy, accessible ways to tap into your ability to think clearly and effectively.

Just a few words also on your environment: the situation into which you bring your Focus to get the best result. When trying to make clear decisions years ago, the mantra around the difficulties people encountered in focusing on what to do was always ‘we don’t have enough information’. ‘We don’t know what to focus on,’ they would say, ‘because we cannot see the full picture and, therefore, might be making bad decisions.’ This is no longer true for the modern world, in which the greater problem is ‘information overload’ and our inability to critically evaluate it all. To make matters worse the world seems to have become addicted to the idea that we never have enough data in the moment. Added to this is the temptation to google everything in order to find more information, as if having further information from an ‘authoritative’ source somehow gives us the knowledge to make a decision.

The result of information overload and the inability to distinguish knowledge from information can often paralyse us until there is a crisis which forces us to make a decision. So we fall into ‘crisis management’ mode, solving the symptoms but not the cause of our problems: indeed we may not even recognise the true problems or issues, nor, as a result, the best decision to make.

I am reminded of the words of T. S. Eliot: ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’1 He also asked, ‘Where is the life we have lost in living?’ Sobering thoughts indeed, and hopefully they demonstrate the importance of Clear Thinking and how you need to be focused to live a satisfying life.

Remember, your desires, needs or deepest wishes will give you the urgency to focus. They will tell you what to focus on – and with that knowledge we can build on your skills of how to focus in order to succeed.

There has been much recent research on the functions of the brain. Neuroscientists have identified what parts of the brain we use when we think and cognitive scientists have explored cognitive illusions and ‘thinking errors’. This helps us to be more aware of how we think and how to improve the way we do so, and there are many reference books you can consult to find out more on the theoretical aspects of how the mind works. My aim is to provide a practical guidebook on how to develop strong Focus, so that you can feel confident in your actions. I will bring you from Focus to Action in a very simple way, based on a wide knowledge of ancient philosophy as well as the practical wisdom of our parents and grandparents.

When I was a student of philosophy, both as an undergraduate and a postgraduate in two different universities in two countries, my interest in how we think – how we use our reasoning processes to convince ourselves we are right (or wrong) – was very focused and included the study of early philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato. With this background, I created the first ‘Clear & Critical Thinking’ training module over twenty years ago and since then I have worked with international corporations and organisations, designing and developing programmes on improving thinking skills for successful leadership, problem-solving and decision-making. The ideas in this book build on those in my first book Quick Thinking On Your Feet, where I looked at the art of manipulation and how to remain focused without losing your train of thought when, all around, others are losing theirs – in other words: how to remain cool in hot situations.2

Included in this book are the stories of ordinary people in some extraordinary and interesting situations. All of these people have one thing in common – they have used their incredible Focus to turn a difficult situation into a resounding success.

Whatever your aim, I hope that this book will help you to achieve the concentration and determination to attain what you want, how you want it and when you want it.

1 T. S. Eliot, The Rock (Faber, 1934).

2 Valerie Pierce, Quick Thinking On Your Feet (Mercier Press, 2003).

3 A Simple Model for Success

Great thinking needs great actions to achieve effective and sustainable solutions. This book is a guide to Clear Thinking in Action – the art of being in control of what you want, when you want it. It is a matter of taking simple steps to achieve success, at your own pace and in your own time.

The idea is that you can take graded steps, according to your own desire, need and ability, to become a clear thinker. We don’t all need to be expert thinkers all of the time. Sometimes we need just a little bit of Clear Thinking to help us on our way, and at other times we need to be much more qualified in what we do. This book will help you to dip into the grade and ability you require. That way you can clarify what you wish to do by breaking your goals into simple, easy-to-manage parts. You can also rest on these ‘steps’, to take stock and give yourself a little reward as you progress that bit further. For this reason, I am choosing the metaphor and visual of a spiral staircase to help you crystallise your progress as you develop. I would like you to imagine climbing this staircase, determined to reach your ultimate goal. With the visual of a stairway you can see that you are progressing on a continuous path towards your unique Peak Performance.

Another reason to use this visual is because of the French expression, esprit de l’escalier or ‘staircase wit’, which refers to what happens when we are not able to focus. Have you ever had that awful feeling when you come out of a meeting where you lost focus and are angry because you didn’t do or say what you had intended? Then, annoyingly, hours later, you know in detail what you should have said?

This ability to focus too late, usually as we are going up the stairs to bed (hence the expression ‘staircase wit’), is infuriating, but at the same time shows us that we do know how to get what we want, but somehow lose that capability ‘in the moment’ or at the time we need it so badly. It is amazing how our brains can click back into gear and tell us exactly what we should have done when it is too late.

I wish to bring that staircase knowledge right into the present moment so that you can learn to work through its details, ready for when you need it. As you become familiar with your personal steps in your development, you will be able to call on that ‘staircase wit’ before it’s too late.

You can see the structure for the pathway to successful action in the spiral staircase in Figure 1. ‘Focus’ is the backbone (the pole in the centre of the staircase), just as it is the basis of your ability to succeed. The steps of the staircase then wind around the Focus of the pole, as they are the steps that you will climb up to reach your full potential, your Peak Performance. The platforms on your staircase are places where you can rest, put down your reading and reflect on how you can implement the learning and ideas you have just digested.

Figure 1: The Spiral Staircase of Success

We all know the much-used expression ‘learning curve’, i.e. the experience we go through to acquire knowledge and expertise. So, most importantly, there are three learning curves to your spiral staircase that will help you to gain the skills you need to secure the Focus of that central pole. As you climb the steps and make your turns, you will experience these ‘learning curves’ as separate entities of development that help you to advance, champion and take control of your thinking.

The three ‘learning curves’ or development skills that help you to achieve your goals are:

■ Passion

■ Productivity

■ Perseverance

Another reason for using the visual of a spiral staircase with its resting platforms and learning curves is to carry you upwards towards your Peak Performance in a way that ensures your thinking cannot spiral downwards. Many of us worry about the direction of our thinking when we find ourselves in a panic or a difficult situation, so my aim is to give you a place of safety in this book where you can take stock of what you need to do in order to be in control of your desired outcomes.

The different sections of this book will explain these learning curves in detail, but first I wish to give you a short understanding of the power that each skill has to carry you up the staircase to success.

Figure 2: Your Personal Learning Curves. Starting with self-awareness, these three critical building blocks develop the required tools for Clear Thinking to achieve confident and creative actions.

Passion

We put ‘A’ at the beginning of much that we do. For example, A is the first letter of our alphabet and it is often used as the symbol for the first thing we have to do at the top of a list of priorities – a, b, c, etc. In addition, ‘A’ is what students wish to achieve in their exams as an illustration of excellence. So with ‘A’ we learn to put first things first while at the same time reaching for excellence.

A is also the first letter of the word ‘act’ – your ultimate goal when you focus. For your Focus to be successful you must concentrate on some action you wish to achieve and have the stamina and staying power to realise it. So as a reminder of how to remain focused I am using the acronym ‘ACT’ to illustrate the actions in each of your learning curves. ‘A’ is the reminder that to achieve successful actions you must begin your journey by ‘Advancing’. As you progress you will follow A with ‘C’, your ability to ‘Champion’ your cause. And finally, ‘T’ is your ability to ‘Take Control’ of both yourself and others to reach your ultimate goals.

So, starting with A as the symbol for your first step on the stairs to Clear-Thinking excellence, with Passion you flex your Focus muscles to A – Advance. Before you can act you need to be able to gain the courage to stand up and get moving, and also, before you can think clearly, you need to know what you want to think clearly about. Being passionate develops your curiosity and feelings of enthusiasm about having a goal and being able to focus clearly enough to reach it.