What speaking at Oxford University taught me about focus

So, I guess it would be fair to say the University of Oxford is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the world. It was founded in the 11th century, although there are tales of its origins dating all the way back to 872 AD; something to do with a rumoured several-day long scholarly debate between Alfred the Great and some particularly cantankerous monks (but what’s a little lore and quibbles between friends. We all love a good origin story, after all).

Leaving folktales aside, being invited this past week to speak at the intellectual home and birthplace of some of history’s most esteemed thinkers, well… let’s just say it wasn’t the kinda thing I felt prone to take lightly.

C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Hawking… just a few of the university’s many notable alumni, and yet, as I pondered what to share with the students and faculty who’d be attending my talk, it was a Columbia University graduate’s thoughts that ineludibly came to mind.

You’ve gotta keep control of your time.

The words of Warren Buffet, apparently spoken whilst proffering the empty pages of his little black diary book to a certain Bill Gates during a meeting back in 1991, “and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.”

Fairly emphatic, huh.

And, as it turned out, just one of the tales shared as I spoke with those in attendance on what is, to me, the most vital tool in any creative’s arsenal: the ability to marshal that most exacting of currencies—our time.

After all, we all know the crippling effects of distractions and procrastinating. But what we seldom realise is how to overcome them, and that we can.

Doing so comes down to learning the art of focus, and how to master it in ways that work with the way we’re naturally wired, rather than against it. Which is why I was keen, during my talk, to share tools and insights I’ve found helpful in doing exactly this in my own work, as well as with those I coach.

Below, you’ll find three of them…

1. Stop when you’re doing good

Ernest Hemingway, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, offered these simple words of advice back in 1935 whilst being interviewed for a feature in Esquire magazine. As he put it:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day… you will never be stuck.

Sentiments similar to those offered by British children’s author and screenwriter, Roald Dahl.

I never come back to a blank page... You don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? You make yourself stop and you walk away.

Although each of them, masters of the page as they were, inevitably recognised the value of this approach with their writing, I’ve found it can be impactful for creatives of almost every discipline.

Gap discipline, I like to call it — a way to leverage yesterday’s momentum into today’s work; and an approach, as you might imagine, that does indeed require discipline.

Why?

Because stepping away from work mid-flow isn’t easy, especially if you believe creative momentum to be a rare and elusive beast, something, once captured, to be ridden to it’s very end.

However, choosing to step away allows you to know exactly where you’re going to continue with your work each day, which invariably reduces the friction of doing so. Add to that the restorative benefits from avoiding overwork, and you have a good recipe for remaining consistently productive.

So, when you’re on a roll, be willing to simply push away from the desk at the end of whatever time you’ve allotted for yourself. It’s a great way to stay creatively sharp, nix burnout, and keep your momentum going for weeks instead of hours.

2. Don’t break the chain

So the story goes that erstwhile budding comic Brad Isaac met Jerry Seinfeld, arguably one of most prolific comedians in history, backstage at an open mic night some years ago.

An encounter Isaac wisely made the most of by asking for the great man’s advice.

“He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes,” Isaac explains. “And the way to create better jokes was to write every day. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.”

“He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

Now, the cool thing about Seinfeld’s approach is it resists the oft lauded invitation to dream big, and instead taps into what productivity experts like James Clear call a ‘process focus’.

In other words, outcomes and results are off the table. The focus is on simply doing the work — steadily, incrementally, day by day; and trusting that the outcome will take care of itself.

As the cliché goes — trust the process.

Intriguingly, I’ve found this approach can offer extra value when taken a step further.

By taking the onus off of the daily pressure to achieve a particular output – i.e. 800 words a day on a manuscript, a joke a day, a completed canvas by the end of the month etc. — and instead shifting focus to achieving a specific input — like, two 50-minute stints a day on the chosen task, for example — you create an aim that is far more controllable, and thereby within reach — Doable. Imaginable. Certain.

Which is often how your mind needs to feel to get started with challenging, long-term projects, and gain the momentum to stick with them.

I can tell you it certainly helped when working to complete the manuscript for my second novel, (within 5 months no less); which is why I coach others who are working on big creative projects to adopt the same approach.

3. Do one thing at a time

The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Apparently the term ‘multitasking’ first appeared in an IBM report back in 1965, discussing the capabilities of that company’s latest computer. Which perhaps should’ve offered a clue to the nature of the term’s utility right there and then. Unfortunately for humans, the notion soon merged into our vernacular as a way for us to work.

After all, why get one thing done when you can do several, all at the same time? Right?

Wrong.

Studies show only 2% of the population can actually multitask effectively. Which means, for most of us, when we think we’re multitasking, our brains aren’t.

What’s really happening is our attention is being forced to shift back and forth between different tasks, causing us to have to disrupt and resume our focus each time, and levying a hefty cognitive ‘switching cost’ that shrinks our overall output and, more often than not, leaves us feeling frazzled.

The answer? Monotask.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.

Steve Jobs

Put simply, getting strict about doing one thing at a time for a specific given interval of time may be one of the most impactful things you can do for your creativity, productivity and your wellbeing.

Which means when it comes to thinking your best thoughts and producing great work, less really is more.

A conclusion, of sorts

Now, I won’t lie, I got a hefty kick out of unpacking these and many other insights for the students and faculty at Oxford University. I love helping to equip others to thrive, in whatever they do. But I guess the thing that was most intriguing about the experience was seeing how incredibly needed these tools truly are.

Often, we know what we need to get done. We’re good at recognising our goals. But we’re seldom equipped with the methods and insights we need to achieve them.

We major on what, but struggle with how (and often why, but that’s a whole other conversation and blog post).

Perhaps one of the most empowering things creative professionals of any kind can do for themselves, is give time to really understanding their proclivities and temperament — their work style, as it were.

It’s only then you become able to fully leverage your talents, and build an approach that can help spur and sustain focus, rather than unwittingly undermine it.

After all, what good is a skill if we feel unable to mobilise ourselves to consistently use it.

As a wise man once said:

“We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.”