Farnam Street – The Art Of Focus

Stop Being Busy
Start Being Valuable

Introducing The Art of Focus, the student-tested online seminar proven to help you accomplish incredible goals.

Focus is like a superpower. Whether you’re learning something new, going for a promotion, or want to write a book—you need to harness the power of focus. Once you do, you’ll achieve extraordinary results.

Here’s How You Work Now

You’re probably being pulled in a thousand different directions all day. You’re expected to return emails promptly, attend meetings that are a waste of time, and basically do busywork all day long.

On top of that, you’re constantly connected because that’s how the modern office works.

As a result, you do a lot of “work,” but you know you’re not adding as much value as you could.

These are the table stakes. You have to do this to play the game but it’s not going to help you win—they’re not going to help you do anything extraordinary.

Yet, some people regularly accomplish extraordinary valuable work every day. This may sound like a dream, but it’s not.

It’s not about Getting Things Done: Those types of systems are about being good at tasks.

But being a Taskmaster isn’t going to cut it anymore. In today’s world, you must do hard things that create value.

In other words, you must work deeply on stuff that matters. Stuff that you can be proud of five, ten or twenty years later, rather than busywork that will barely matter a week from now. Things like: starting and finishing a six-month long creative project; learning a new skill or subject that will serve you for your entire career; writing a book, white paper or research paper; or reading a technical document from cover to cover.

People who accomplish extraordinary results don’t just react to what the day offers: They proactively attack their schedule, and they deliberately structure their time. They don’t let others drive their agenda and sap all their energy. They aren’t in useless meetings all day or constantly chatting on their inter-office messenger (or worse, social media).

I know, it’s daunting. You feel a little helpless. But I want to help you get there.

How about multitasking for efficiency?
It might seem like the modern white-collar environment is totally not conducive to getting work done.

You’re right, it isn’t.

Most people solve this by multitasking: Trying to do a bunch of things at one time.

But multitasking doesn’t work. At all. In fact, multitasking is not even real. You can’t do two cognitively-demanding tasks at once; your brain switches between them rapidly.

As the famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman puts it, “It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other.”

But even if multitasking not technically real, we can still effectively do it, can’t we?

Well, a bunch of researchers studied that at Stanford. They wanted to figure out how multitaskers did it. How come young people can check their phone, listen to their music, and do their homework at the same time?

What do you think they found?

They found that not only was Kahneman right, but that so-called multitaskers get worse at it over time!

Fragmenting your attention doesn’t work.

That’s why you need to learn how to focus on one thing at a time. With the march of technology, open offices, and endless bureaucracy, this is getting harder and harder. Some people have decided it’s just impossible.

But it’s not impossible. It’s just hard. You need to figure out the right approach.

Why Focusing is Hard
Focus is like a muscle. And if you’re like most people, your focus muscles have gotten weak due to your constant multitasking, web-surfing, and busy-working.

Focusing on one thing means putting other things aside. It means not waiting until the last-second to do an important project or read an important paper, using the last-minute crunch to force you to focus.

To accomplish something great you need to focus each and every day. More than that, you need strategies to protect your time and energy.

What is The Art of Focus?

The Art of Focus is the art of accomplishing difficult things by learning to put all your attention on one thing at a time. Accomplishing the extraordinary involves:

1. Deciding where and how you can create real value professionally, and putting other things aside.

2. Proactively managing the type of work you spend the majority of your time on.

3. Figuring out effective ways to plan and use your time.

4. Implementing actual strategies to get people to leave you alone (and not mind doing so).

5. Creating the right environment so you can focus.

And I’m going to teach you how to start focusing so you can accomplish things you never thought possible — getting a promotion, writing a book, learning something difficult. All of it.