How do you achieve Focus or Flow?

Everybody says “you need to be focused, the secret of success is FOCUS!”

Some others call it FLOW. “Peak performance is a result of being in a state of flow!”

OK, understood … but how do you achieve that bloody focus??? Is it always easy for you? It’s not for me!

I decided to do some research and I found a lot of interesting stuff but here I’m just going to share an insightful talk by Friederike Fabritius – a neuroscientist – that provides the most satisfactory answer in my opinion. The talk is called Fun, Fear and Focus. I’d recommend that you watch the whole thing! I watched it and I was totally focused! 🙂

To give you the golden nugget:

If you want to achieve focus, forget focus and do this:

1) Add FUN to your activity, make it more playful, use different methods of working towards a goal, try different strategies, see it as a game!

2) Add FEAR to what you do, make it challenging, make the outcome feel a little uncertain, it needs to feel like it’s taking you slightly out of your comfort zone (not completely out of your comfort zone though!).

If you do (1) and (2), all of a sudden, scientists found that FOCUS comes effortlessly! It’s a byproduct of FUN and FEAR. Because think about it, you can’t be focused on something that’s boring, repetitive, extremely easy for you no matter how focused you’re trying to stay!

PS: In my opinion, the idea of FOCUS goes further than all the above and touches deeper things like mindfulness, meditation and living in the present. Here, I just “focused” on how we can achieve focus at work or some activity that’s important for our success.