Focus – Month-End

I just finished the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s topic was focus. You can read my initial thoughts here, and summaries of the eight books I read here.

For those interested, you can also check out my previous nine months’ efforts here:

1.     Fitness: Start, End, Books.
2.     Productivity: Start, End, Books.
3.     Money: Start, End, Books.
4.     Food: Start, End, Books.
5.     Reading: Start, End and Books.
6.     Outreach: Start, End, Books.
7.     Sleep: Start, End, Books.
8.     Reflection: Start, End, Books.
9.     Connection: Start, End, Books.

The Keystone Habit: Daily Highlights

This month was, ironically, more scattered than previous months. I didn’t have a clear idea of what the keystone habit ought to be going into this month. So, for the first time in the project, I didn’t begin the month working on the habit I recommend in the course.¹

Eventually, I settled on the habit of choosing a daily highlight—a practice suggested in Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky’s useful book, Make Time—as being closest to my original intentions for the month.

Having a “highlight,” as opposed to a focus, a Most Important Task, or even an ordered list of priorities (all techniques I tried out this month), seemed to better capture the inherent tension between wanting to emphasize and make room for one thing in your life, while also accepting that you’re never going to have a blank calendar from which to operate.

I found the daily highlight helpful as a practice, too. It allowed me to feel good about my day even when getting everything done turned out to be impossible. Additionally, the act of choosing the daily highlight helped to reveal my priorities, stretched out over time. I could see which things I consistently highlighted which, in turn, revealed what my actual priorities are.

Finding Focus in an Increasingly Distracted World

A recurring theme throughout the various foundations is the idea of evolutionary mismatch. We didn’t evolve to exercise; ancestral life was strenuous, so we never developed an instinct to run around unnecessarily. Now, staying alive requires little physical effort, so we move less than we need to be optimally healthy.

Similar stories could be told about diet (modern foods encourage us to overeat), sleep (indoor lighting keeps us awake) or friendship (TV and video simulate social interaction).

This is particularly clear with focus. Our attentional environment overwhelms us to the point where it can be difficult to concentrate: Incessant emails, texts and other messages. Social media and algorithmically-optimized outrage. Always-present phones ensuring we never experience a moment of boredom.

But whereas the changes in most other domains of life have been decades (or centuries) in the making, this onslaught to our attention is incredibly new.

This suggests to me that many of the self-control devices and environmental modifications we need to optimize our focus either haven’t been invented yet or aren’t widely adopted. Perhaps, as we begin to recognize these dangers, we’ll develop more tools to push back against distraction.

 Still, it’s hard not to be pessimistic. The failure rate of traditional dieting for weight loss shows that the majority of people can’t unilaterally modify their food environment sufficiently to maintain a healthy weight. Perhaps we’ll end up in the same boat with focus—simply accepting that, for the majority of people, the endless barrage of attentional junk will crowd out slower-paced activities like books, hobbies or deep thinking.

Updates to Previous Foundations

Here are some updates on my previous nine foundations:

1. Fitness. I had a bit of a dip in fitness last month owing to being sick. It took me longer to recover my usual running pace and energy than I had expected. But I now seem to be back on track.
2. Productivity. Largely unchanged. This is fully automatic now. The system itself works well, but there’s always more to do than time to do it, so some tasks end up getting delayed.
3. Money. Also unchanged. The nice thing about having a passive investing strategy is that you can basically ignore the moves of the market which, as I’m writing this in April, have been jarring!
4. Food. I’ve definitely gotten more relaxed here than I was a few months ago. I still think I’ve improved from my diet a year ago, but I’m less stringent than I was when this was my focus. My weight has remained stable at around 15 lbs. less than my weight last year.
5. Reading. I’ve managed to keep up the pace of reading 7-8 books for the project each month, and even managed to sneak in some “off-topic” reading. Still, I expect the forcing function of this project is keeping my reading artificially high. I expect my natural reading rate is closer to 4-5 books per month.
6. Outreach. This foundation is more seasonal than I had realized. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I’m finding it much easier to meet people spontaneously.
7. Sleep. I’m less strict than during my initial month—sometimes I have a second coffee (although rarely in the afternoon), and I have been breaking my self-imposed 9:00 pm screen-time “curfew” more often than I’d like. Still, my average minutes of sleep have not gone down and continue to be above my average from last year, which suggests there are some durable improvements here.
8. Reflection. I journaled less this past month, but I’ve been making up for it by sketching more (a different kind of reflective practice). Additionally, I’ve been dialoging with AI to do some of the kinds of problem-solving that would have been entirely solitary in the past.
9. Connection. Keeping my phone out of arm’s reach while at home with the family has been a consistent priority. Still, it’s amazing how automatic this distracted behavior is—if I have my phone nearby I’ll start using it without really realizing that’s what I’m doing. This month’s topic was a further reminder that much of our attention is not governed consciously, and of the need for changes to our environment rather than simply demanding we exert more self-discipline.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about the previous foundations. To be clear, most of them have regressed somewhat from when each was my primary focus for a month. That’s to be expected. What I’m evaluating myself on is both the overall sustainability of the habits, as well as how the current behavior compares to my baseline before starting the project, which is improved for all of them.

Now, as I embark on the final two months of the project, my goal is to finish strong and not let these last two months go to waste. Next month I’ll be focusing on organization. I’ll share my opening update for that next week!

1. As noted previously, I’m working on my personal Foundations project three months ahead of the class and publishing these essays synchronously with the course content. I had plenty of time to make up my mind before the students reached this month in the class.