Focus!

My current workout is called T25, an intense 25 minutes of serious sweat put together by the master himself, Shaun T. His other workouts include Insanity and Asylum, plus some less crazy ones. I haven’t done Asylum (even the name makes me shudder a little) but I have done Insanity – and that’s 45 minutes or an hour of pure, hard work 6 days a week.

So how do people get results in just 25 minutes? It’s all in the FOCUS, a word Shaun repeats over and over. It’s on the walls behind him in the studio. It’s even officially a part of the name – “Focus T25.”

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about multi-tasking. What was once a hallmark of ultimate efficiency, this drive to do a zillion things all at once is coming under fire. Turns out our minds are not really capable of cooking and talking on the phone all at once, or writing a paper and listening to our kids. (I think it’s safe to say, though I might be proved wrong, that you can still walk and chew gum at the same time.) Our mind ping-pongs back and forth between the tasks, making each take longer or turn out poorly. Far better to focus on one thing for a time, then shift focus.

From a photography standpoint, if you're not focused, the picture is blurry.

This focus (for lack of a better word) on focus, on doing one thing and giving it your all, I can also think of as intentionality. If I am deliberate in my decisions and in my actions, I will get results.

Focus. As powerful a word as any I’ve heard lately. How might you apply it?