Problems with Focus
In this brief article I discuss the issues with focus and the possible causes that could effect the optimized Life accordingly.
It is no secret that the optimized life one in which you get the things you desire and where the things you do not desire you are capable of eliminating those things in a timely capacity accordingly. To be able to get the things you desire to some degree is your capability of doing the things that you desire over yourself irrespective of the discomfort or the unpleasantness of the given task. I fundamentally believe this is repeated multi-decade disconnect I’ve been having. It is this singular ability to be able to have boredom tolerance to the difficulty of something to actualize it’s intrinsic benefit that we can materialize the capability of being able to attain the optimized life. The single biggest trend I notice is a distraction like disdain for doing the work. My brain wants to constantly avoiding doing the things that benefit it. This has been easily the single most consistent thing that has killed my capacity to materialize my own intrinsic potential is the capability of being able to develop the iron-clad discipline to overcome Boredom.
I feel like I’m always BORED. I am bored all the time. I know exactly what I need to do why I need to do it but I am simply not doing it because it’s just so Boring. Where most low-level individuals fall under is that when the given task is boring and uninteresting then we opt out. We quit. The dopamine level is too damn level so it’s not worth pursuing and it’s not worth going through. It’s not something that’s worth committing to. The feeling of doing the given work does not traverse the given time-gap. So, I seek these meaningless dopamine hits to ease the boredom and then we constantly seek this novelty that does not provide long sustained contentness. How do we break this cycle?
Why does it feel so difficult to focus and do what we say we are going to do? Why do the brain not do what we say we are going to do? For the longest time, this is why I abidded by a strict absolute all or nothing routine. As long as I have this all or nothing routine then I know I am not going to deviate from the given task at hand. To not deviate in your effort and to persist through the boredom has to be a skill to be developed. To be frank it’s my kryptonite. It is like death but their must be a way to overcome this lack of stimulation. In studying bash I’ve tried reviewing different ideas, making video content reviewing and everything else in relationship to reviewing bash. The fact of the matter none of it is interesting. None of it is compelling in any context. Does this mean I don’t like the work? Does this mean that the long lasting incentives are not compelling enough? Do I lack the will to overcome the wall of resistance that is before me? Is their something that we are missing or is this fundamentally how it has to be for anything great to be achieved. This is a big issue and one that needs to be fixed in my mental firmware or I cannot expect to accomplish anything of greatness.
Thus, the ability to focus is to direct our given efforts, fruits of are CPU capacities towards a given objective that leads to a long-term return on investment. This capability needs to be in a sustained capacity that overcomes the challenge. It does not matter how one feels. In this case, we must say fuck our feelings. We cannot become emotional towards the task at hand. We cannot expect ourselves to become perpetually frustrated or fall apathetic in the face of difficulty. In doing so, we develop the receipts necessary to say we did thing 1, thing 2, thing 3 → that leads to this beneficial long-term objective. This is where we need this surplus of energy relative to the unpleasantness of what we face or internal motivation.
The period of internal motivation must rise during the period of productivity or critical point that demands the inherent insight to lead to an incredibly valuable computation consistently, persistently and over a long time. The known set number of things that we do are knowable and implementable. This means everyone of us knows exactly what to do, it’s just overcoming the brains lack of cooperation in order to attain the given cooperation necessary to yield a high beneficial skill. This is not so easily done and fundamentally comes back to the same thing I’ve contemplated for ears. How can we develop this intrinsic motivation constantly?
Is it possible to be able to transcend the limitations of the common man? What is it about successful individuals that makes them successful? What is it about individuals who are intrinsically successful that we can harvest and develop within ourselves? I’ve done it to a limited degree but their are still higher levels of reality that I have yet to attain. The state of intrinsic motivation must be at the point where your half way through the book and your brain says “Screw this book, let’s go swipe on instagram.” In this given moment their needs to be a capacity to be able to tell your brain, “"No we are going to read this book until the given task is done.” You will read this book and then your brain will rebel against you. I can say I’ve lost this battle more times than I care to admit. Focusing is a pain and it always feel like your fighting yourself. Is their a way we can develop this capacity and if so what would it look like?
I have a few ideas of what could work but is it likely to work probably not but it’s worth the try isn’t it? The first few things is to eliminate high dopamine activities.
Limit social-media consumption → social media production → generate revenues and build following to build the personal brand accordingly
Use AI to enhance and streamline your productivity outputs to their highest possible levels. I use AI to augment my capabilities and to fill in the gaps of my given knowledge where I feel like I don’t know something.
Limit video-games and ban all forms of media consumption: My first initial thought on video or media consumption was correct 4 years ago(obviously I was right) but it absolutely decimates your productivity output dramatically. You tend to get a dopamine chaser effect and you tend to listen to other peoples messages but not your own messages. In general the only video-game I play is CHESS and it has to be over the board chess. NO ONLINE VIDEO-GAMES. The dopamine high is too much and you become a crack addict chasing the drug. Real life chess or games like shogi have definite limits and requires that you play with friends accordingly.
Do not drink with too much sugar, caffeine(causes addiction which I have lol), artificial sweetners or anything that ruins your natural dopamine levels.
Avoid all things hyperstimulating PORN is a BIG NO NO.
Make a commitment to focus and do not deviate. Do not open up any tabs, don’t check your email, do not go on youtube, no music, no random phone-calls, no responding to text messages. This is focus time. Focus, get the taks done and when that pomodoro timer is finished. Take your earned break.
Try to find many ways to make something boring fun or explore, interesting ideas or things you may not have tried before.
I’ve been thinking about this but do 1 boring thing every single day. Get used to that boring thing and ask yourself: “How can I make this boring task more exciting task?” You can also tell yourself that I must do this boring thing to get to this exciting thing.
Take on meditation or do tons of hard thing sin the morning so that you have momentum to even more challenging and difficult things later in the day accordingly.
Accept that anything worth doing always SUCKS. To be honest this is something I still struggle with. Anything worth doing always SUCKS. Always. It’s never changed for me. I still lift and their are days it just sucks and I don’t want to do it. You can’t escape the suck but you can reframe the suck.
I still have more on this subject that needs to be discussed but this is a rough idea of training on how to overcome boredom. Their is still more on this that needs to be discussed. But simply having the discussion with ourselves on how to make ourselves boredom proof will pave things a long way to living the optimized life. The reality is your gonna get bored doing hard stuff. Hard stuff is NEVER fun. We need to train ourselves and in doing so we cultivate a better reality.