Use this trick to stay focussed in life?

If you are busy with many different activities in life but still you do not have a clear direction in life then it is a time to do some sort of self-auditing to understand what is happening in you. For doing a self-auditing of your activities, please follow the tool mentioned in my blog on Personal Effectiveness : A self-exploration tour .

Let us consider that you set the goals and have a clear definition of your purpose of life. But, sometimes your daily activities are counterproductive and of “no use” or hindrance to the actual purpose of your life. In such a case, you are simply thrown away everywhere in life & it is a clear sign that you are defocused in life. As per the research, approximately 80% of our daily activities are counterproductive when you become defocused in life.

What is the cause for the defocus? Why your intention and action are polarity opposite to each other?

When you set a goal, you have a very high expectation and you put your heart and soul to achieve the goal. You implement right kind of actions for you to get the desired results. It is quite natural that you expect a directly proportional result based on your action. It takes a beat on your motivational level particularly when the results are not in line with your expectation. There is a direct relationship between the reward centre of the brain and the motivation centre of the brain.

In reality, since the action is brand new to you, the perception level of your action gets magnified. Consider a case that you have not done running at all in life. Now, you are given a task to complete a one KM run. This is a new action to you and it is perceived as a paramount task whereas the same task is perceived simply a meek by a regular runner. Your magnified perception of the action produces a magnified perception of the reward. In reality, this does not happen as the system has a time constant to adapt to the new state. In case of running, your body has a time constant to adapt to the new state.

You get demotivated when you do not understand the magnified perception of the action and the time constant (time lag in getting the result) of the system. In case of demotivation, you get a focus shift where you may drop the current goal and take up a new goal. With the new set goal, the same process repeats again. Over a period of time, this becomes your new habit where your penetration level in achieving the goal stays unfortunately at 10 to 20% level. This is the cause of your defocus and how you are thrown everywhere in life.

Way to stay focus: During the initial phase of goal achieving mechanism, it is important to expect and look for reward with SMALLER magnitude. This activates the reward centre of the brain which in turn triggers the motivation centre of the brain to take further actions. Over a period of time, the brain gets hardwire with this new pattern and hitting a winning streak becomes your new habit. This builds the right momentum in you to take further actions. The compounding effect of the smaller results generates the desired BIGGER result too. With each new action, you have not only progressed one step closer to your goal but you have increased your penetration level in achieving the goal. You stay focused with this smaller shift in your perception of your action and reward.