What Is Your Focish?

My friend Scrappy the Squirrel is always up for putting off the work into tomorrow so that we can play today.

My word for 2021 is FOCISH. Don’t look it up in the dictionary because it’s not there, at least not yet. But it should be. Focish is a mash up of the words focus and finish.

That word – which is posted in my office where I see it every day – reminds me to focus on my #1 priority and to keep that focus until I have finished. And to ignore Scrappy the Squirrel and all of his cousins who would rather lure me outside to play.

Anyone who really has ADD, so-called attention deficit disorder, knows how absolutely inaccurate that description is. We do not have a deficit of attention. We have a surplus. We become so overwhelmed because we’re trying to pay attention to everything all at once. It should be called ASD – attention surplus disorder.

The subtitle of the book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr is “what the internet is doing to our brains.” Executive summary: Carr says it is really bad.

And that book was written 10 years ago. Before Pinterest and TickTock and a thousand other new sources of technological e-distraction came onto the scene, before the polarized political craziness of the past five years dominated headlines and so much of our thinking and conversation, and before “pandemic brain” further disrupted on our ability to concentrate and remember. 

Over the past ten years, the world has gotten much better at pickpocketing your attention without you even being aware of it over the past ten years.

In several days, my good friend Gary Ryan Blair will launch the Q3 edition of the 100 Day Challenge. He will point out that on July 1, one-half of the year 2021 will have disappeared into the rearview mirror. Given that reality, how would you answer these two questions:

Question #1: What is your most important priority to accomplish over the next six months? The #1 thing that requires your Focus?

Question #2: What things must you do during those six months to Finish your work and achieve the object of that focus?

Your personal commitment to FOCISH will help you reclaim and protect your most precious resource – your attention. Attention is the platform upon which vision is built. What you choose to pay attention to today will shape the vision you have for the future. (Note that I said “pay” attention. Your attention is a non-renewable resource that cannot be loaned.)On Tuesday, July 6 Gary and I will share some incredibly powerful and effective strategies for finding your focus and finishing your work. Please join us – you’ll be glad that you did!

Mark your calendar now: Details to come tomorrow!

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