I believe that the ability to focus on the most important task is one of the most valuable skills available.
What Inhibits Focus
- distraction: This is perhaps the most well known inhibitor of focus. But it is certainly not all-inclusive.
- temptation: the various things that we’d rather focus on as opposed to what we should focus on.
- lack of motivation
- procrastination: Procrastination almost certainly always has an underlying cause. We don’t procrastinate just for the sake of it. We procrastinate because we have fear, lack of motivation etc. So it’s not that helpful to say, “I can’t focus because I’m procrastinating”. Rather it is better to say “I’m procrastinating. Now let’s try to find out why.”
- cognitive dissonance
- conflict in values: when you are committed to endeavors that conflict with your values this will only hurt your focus and is a sign that either your values or behavior need to change.
- Fear
- confusion : Lack of understanding of key facts.
- ambiguity: Increased difficulty to distinguish and discern key facts.
- confusion vs. ambiguity: Here, these two terms may seem synonymous but there is an important distinction. With confusion, key facts are difficult to grok because we are confused, but with ambiguity, key facts are difficult to grok because we have limited access to the facts. The facts are inherently ambiguous.
- ignorance: Lack of awareness of key facts.
- depression , hopelessness
Case Studies
Why Google failed to make GPT-3