The Bucket of Focus

We all have a limited amount of cognitive bandwidth or mental capacity each day. As you give your attention to various tasks, this mental capacity gets used up. Your phone, exercise, work, family and friends, reading and household chores could be a few tasks where this happens. Imagine a bucket filled with water. Your focus for the entire day is the total amount of water in the bucket. Every task you do, uses up small amounts of this water. If your bucket is empty by mid-day, then it’ll be difficult to efficiently work and focus for the rest of the day. This happens if you are constantly switching between different tasks. You interrupt yourself over and over again. This in turn causes your quality of work to be affected.  

This explanation in the book was followed by a line that has helped me gain a better, clearer picture of how to balance and pursue multiple dreams. “History makers don’t diffuse their cognitive width; they don’t dilute their creative gifts chasing every shiny diversion or opportunity that comes their way. They exercise fierce discipline.” Focusing on a few tasks but giving their whole and soul, no complacency.

Prioritizing specific tasks for a day is smart work, which should then be followed by unwavering focus on those tasks and giving your best. This is smart work coupled with hard work.

A Brain with 6 pack Abs

Our brains can be sculpted and optimized. Our neuroplasticity allows us to develop new skills, learn and understand concepts and apply them when need be. Just how muscles develop by consistently lifting heavy weights, our brains develop as well. Willpower is an intangible feeling. An ability. Its not inborn in humans. It must be developed. Waking up early every day is perfect training for our brains to develop willpower.

Personal discipline, further explained in the book, is like a muscle. The more it’s pushed, the more it grows. That is why our discipline needs to be constantly tested with difficult challenges or situations.

At the same time, like our physical muscles, we need rest. Rest to recover. Finally, focusing on improving self-control in one area of your life will affect all other areas as well.

For example: – Having a fixed sleep schedule will mean that you wake up at the same time every day. This way you reach work on time. You aren’t stressed and are in control. This in turn allows you to think clearly and be more productive at work. You feel confident and hence your overall day went well.

On the other hand, if you have no routine sleep cycle. You may wake up late one day. You are already stressed as you are late for a meeting. You reach late and are now embarrassed. This runs in your mind the entire day and you can’t focus on work. Thus, the whole day was unproductive.

Your discipline in one aspect of your life has the ability to affect all your tasks throughout the day. It could be anything, not just waking up early. Maybe you want to consistently consume a healthy diet, or reach your place of work on time regardless of when you sleep, or no matter how your day goes you want to exercise in the evening. It could be anything.

The constant in all these, is persistence. Repeating the task. Every. Single. Day. It gets boring. Maybe even infuriating. You aren’t seeing progress. You want quick results. Even through all this, you continue. You focus on doing what needs to be done regardless of your mood swings. This consistency! Will elevate you. It will increase your self-respect.

A unique behaviour which is displayed by a character in the book is that he keeps saying positive things to himself. Randomly in between conversations, a few times in a day. Things like “I am a kind person and I want to live everyday as a world class leader. I want to keep bringing value to people and live in service of humanity”.

He’s merely stating our innate feelings. Things that we truly desire in the depths of our hearts. By saying it out loud we force our subconscious brains to become optimistic. To think in that direction. To work with those goals in mind. It then becomes an automated state. Before you know it, you are doing what you used to physically speak, what you truly desired. It happens by itself while you’re focused on work.

This is the medicine to the self-victimizing disease discussed earlier. If you keep on complaining and say negative things, you will lead a life that is negative. Experience the power of positive reinforcement on your mind.

These are just a few lessons from a book filled with a truckload of quotes and productivity models. A quote that was normal for me, might be the motivation you need. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to understand more about how are brains work and how to achieve discipline in our lives, I would highly recommend this book. It might get slow in the middle but keep at it. Out of the 50 lessons Robin Sharma has to teach you might be looking for just 1. That 1 lesson could be at the start or the very end of the book.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.