The name of Daniel Goleman might make you think of another masterpiece that he has written connected to emotional intelligence. But today is all about focus. His book “ Focus. The hidden driver of excellence” is a fantastic guide for anyone who wants to understand how to focus better and which are the factors that can impede intentional focus.
Did you know that the masters, the ones that achieve excellence, are using a simple secret to get to the goals that they desire? The secret is dedicated time slots of maximum 4 hours per day for that particular activity. Our brain has a cognitive limit on how much we can absorb so use this information for your personal self in order to get back on track.
A leader of a company is very successful at guiding people depending on the strategy that he picks. Studies have shown that the higher you are on the social ladder the bigger the odds for you to be blind to emotional cues. Your empathy can suffer as you are less connected with those on the bottom. So the more you care about someone, the more attention you pay,says Goleman.
SEL (social emotional learning) is something that the schools in Singapore are making mandatory. This method teaches kids soft skills and how to cope with emotions, leading them to building a vital trait for life and focus: executive control. You see, the issue with focus goes both ways: you have to know where to focus and why and also to be able to stop focusing on what is irrelevant. This requires a very well structured brain and it all starts in childhood (see the study done on the children of Dunedin, New Zealand). Goleman speaks of possible futures for schools, where brain training games and attention training would be a standard part of schooling, helping children that have autism and attention deficit disorders immensely.
In order to focus well you also need moments of daydreaming, of wandering, of letting your mind be free of the pressure of figuring it out. Sounds like a paradox right? But think of a car that would never stop for fuel…that would not go very far for long, right?
If you want a great focus keep your eyes on the positive. Negative focus, based on instilling fear does not work long term. Forget about punishing people, threatening them or humiliating them. It is counterproductive and it will only win you a tyrannical reputation.
The biggest secret to focus is to manage your emotions. Emotional reactivity impairs your capacity to mitigate, assess and solve a situation. Tell me how much mastery have you achieved in controlling your emotions and I might guess how big is your capacity to focus…
Have you ever had problems with focusing? What methods have you tried in order to achieve more clarity and structure in the way you think and act?
Watch a long video review of this book here:
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