Based on the definition of focus and the things you’ve read (the definition of focus is “directed attention”) the theory is the following:
Your attention can be controlled. Sometimes it’s controlled by you, sometimes it’s controlled by your environment (ads, media, TV, radio, other people, the boss, colleagues, family, etc). Using this, you can place reminders and symbols around your environment that will direct your attention to something you’re currently working on.
Ifocus Business Planner is the perfect tool for this job.
In order to apply all of this in practice as well, you need to know some things:
- When thinking about goals, plan in 3 month intervals. I won’t explain why; you can find that in another blog post.
- Treat EACH of your goal as a different PROJECT.
- Describe what you’d like to achieve in the next 3 months in the CLARITY field. This will be the PROJECT you’ll be working on.
- DIVIDE your goal into smaller project themes and complete the planner’s PROJECT THEMES fields (Sit down, drink a good cup of coffee or tea and describe the smaller parts your project consists of).
- VERY IMPORTANT! Specify how much time will it take to complete each PROJECT THEME. No need to overcomplicate things, just give an estimate.
- Once step “5” is done, write down every PROJECT THEME into the PROJECT TIMELINE page and mark the beginning week and the time it’ll take with an X.
- Then write down every PROJECT THEME’S number in a chronological order into the WEEKLY PLANNER pages.
So pick up your first week’s weekly planner, and put the first week’s PROJECT THEME’S number into the top left corner. You can work on several project themes at once.
Where should you put the numbers? There’s a field in the top left corner with the following question: Which project theme are you working on this week? You can find the field underneath this question.
Fill in your WEEKLY PLANNER’S top left corner IN ADVANCE! DON’T fill it out on a weekly basis, DO IT NOW.
This way, you’ll know exactly what is it that you should work on this week, and if your project theme takes only one week, you can finish it.
Just take a look into your planner and you’ll know everything!
How cool is that?
Pretty cool I think.
Of course, there could be complications, mistakes, basically anything could happen that would slow down your progress or distract you, but you have a stable foundation you can build upon.
This is how you’ll be productive in the long term.
