The Secret to Getting Focused is . . .

Yesterday morning was one of those cold, windy, rainy Spring mornings.  I was walking my daughter to the bus stop as well as walking the dog for her morning constitution. 

Actually, the night before I was stranded in my office for over an hour because it was pouring down rain–I forgot my umbrella on the train that morning, and didn’t really want to mess up my suit.  Ah yes, Springtime.

Anyway, on the way to the bus stop I saw this young man, about 15 years old.  He had that lanky-15-year-old appearance, with a little wispy black mustache and head full of wild, curly black hair. 

Our young man is an athlete of some sort, or so I’m assuming, as he was out in that nasty weather running.  Perhaps he’s on the high school track team.  

In fact, I realized this kid is out every morning for his daily run.   I started noticing him a couple months ago when it was still mighty cold.  6:15am in those frigid Chicago mornings, I’d hear his oversized adolescent feet stomping somewhere in the distance, galloping down the sidewalk, cutting through the alley, then popping up a minute later somewhere else.   He seems to run the same two-block  circuit everyday, lap after lap. 

The kid is dedicated.  To what exactly, I don’t know.  The track team is my best guess.  I’d like to ask him, but he’s moving too fast.   And he’s too focused to break his rhythm and concentration to satisfy some stranger’s curiosity. 

So I got to thinking, where does our focus come from?  Why do we have it sometimes and not have it at other times?  How do we lose it?  How do we get it back? 

I think there’s a secret ingredient to focus.  Without this ingredient, our focus will lack power.  With this ingredient, we will run lap after lap, day after day, in wind, rain, and icy temps, as our young track star is doing every day. 

What is this ingredient?  Urgency.  With urgency, we focus.  Without urgency, we are distractible. 

You’re a student, and you have an exam tomorrow.  Not just any exam, but a final exam.  And, this particular final exam is worth 50% of your final grade.  AND you haven’t studied.  And you NEED to pass this class to graduate.   And, despite your not having studied, you really do want to graduate, though your slacker attitude seems to indicate otherwise.  But you finally “wake up”, and go into panic mode. 

Do you think you will have any problem focusing in this scenario?  I don’t think so.  Why?  Because you’ve finally obtained some urgency—perhaps too late in the game, but you’ll have it at least for the final few hours before the exam. 

Your boss says you’ll lose your job if your numbers aren’t up by the end of the month.  Will you get your focus back?  Maybe, maybe not—it depends.  

Would this threat of job loss create urgency?  If you have another job lined up and you’re about to leave anyway, then of course not.  But if you have 3 little kids at home, a mortgage payment, and the job market sucks, then you better believe you’ll have some urgency. 

In fact, this brings to mind one of my all-time favorite  movies, Glengarry Glen Ross.  It’s a very stressful, depressing story (at least to me) about the desperation of a team of real estate salesmen.   Alec Baldwin comes in as the district manager and threatens everyone’s job.  Jack Lemmon and Alan Arkin ooze utter desperation and urgency, and thus focus, as they enter a frenzy of trying to make cold-call sales with dead leads. 

Al Pacino is also desperate, though his desperation seems more controlled, and his urgency is for a different reason than Lemmon’s and Arkin’s (watch the movie to see why).    If you haven’t seen it, check it out (if you don’t like strong language, though, don’t watch it).

We need urgency!  Sometimes we need to create our own urgency—this comes from deep inside.  For example, we may have the burning desire to be the best at something, or to prove ourselves.  Perhaps no one is pressuring us, but it’s something that we ourselves are pursuing, for our own reasons.

Sometimes we need urgency from outside of us (back to our example of the threat of losing a job).

So get urgency, wherever  and however you get it! 

Are there other things that will sharpen our focus?  Sure.  But this is one thing that seems strong to me.