No One Ever Taught You to Focus
You were told to pay attention and concentrate for your whole education, but no one taught you how, and focus is a skill that has to be taught and then practiced like the piano.
Dandapani starts with his guru's insistence on first principles: you learn the clutch and the gears before you drive. He argues that people have no basic understanding of the mind, that instruction to pay attention is not instruction in how, and that companies patch distraction with rules and quiet rooms instead of teaching the skill.
What this talk covers
- His guru taught the basic principles of the mind, the way you must know the clutch, brake, accelerator and gears before you can drive a stick shift at all.
- People have no fundamental understanding of the mind, so they cannot harness or direct it; if he cannot focus on you for three minutes, communication breaks down and misunderstanding creeps in.
- Growing up we are told to pay attention and concentrate, but nobody teaches us how to do it.
- Learning the piano takes instruction and then practice, and how much you practice depends on how good you want to be, and focus is no different.
- Companies turn off social media and build quiet rooms, which patches the problem instead of teaching people how to focus; once taught, a person can work in a busy cafe or in Times Square.
If I practice distraction eight hours a day, I'm going to be really good at it.Dandapani
Questions
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Because nobody taught you how, and because you have been practicing the opposite. If the average person is awake sixteen hours and spends seven or eight of them distracted, distraction is the skill they are building.
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Yes, the same way piano is learned. Someone has to teach you how, and then you have to practice it, because you do not become good at what you do not practice.
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He calls those patches. They block distraction without teaching the underlying skill, so the moment the environment changes the problem returns.
Transcript
818 words · 3:43
My guru was very focused on basic principles of the mind that everybody should know. You know, it's the one-on-one. So, for example, look at a stick shift car. You really need to know the clutch, the brake, the accelerator, the gears,
and how to release the clutch slowly, press the accelerator, change gears. Once you get that down, you can drive the car. But if you don't understand those basics, you can't even drive the car. Then the next step is going faster, making sharper turns, doing donuts,
So whatever it is you want to do, but the mind is no different. People don't have a basic fundamental understanding of the mind. And because they don't, they're unable to harness it and direct it. And one of the basic understandings of the mind is just understanding how does it work
and the ability to focus it. If I can't focus on you for longer than three minutes, how can I even hear what you're saying? Then, you know, communication breaks down. I hear bits and pieces.
I misunderstand. Misunderstanding creeps in. Everything just falls apart. For me, it's let's go back to first principles, you know, let's understand, get a basic understanding of the mind.
Let's just learn to be focused. If I can focus, I can be present. If I'm present, I can hear what you're saying. We can communicate.
Now we can build on that. But if you can't even do that, why bother with the next step? Okay. I was actually watching a video yesterday and like for the life of me, I can't
remember who it was, who was saying that when we grow up, a phrase we hear all the time is pay attention, you know, like we say that to our kids at home. we say it to ourselves in school, pay attention, pay attention, but no one ever teaches you how to pay attention. You just get told to pay attention. And so there's actually a
breakdown in that, like, how do you build the skill of paying attention? Yeah, and I use a simple analogy in America for like, piano, like, I can't play the piano. If someone came up to me, he sat me in front of a piano and said, Don Capone, play the piano. Like, how? I have to learn how to do it. And then the second thing is that I have to practice.
And how much do I practice? Well, how good do I want to be? If I want to play for my on Ethel on the weekend, maybe I practice five minutes a week. If I want to play for Juliet, it might be seven hours a day, six days a week.
And I think focus is no different. Telling someone to focus or pay attention doesn't work. You got to teach them how to do it. And then you have to help them practice it.
Because if you don't practice something, you don't become good at it. And one of the things I always say is that, you know, people are masters at distraction
because that's what they practice every day. If you have 24 hours a day, and to say the average person sleeps eight hours a day and you're awake for 16 hours,
How many hours a day does the average person practice destruction? If it's seven, eight hours a day, then what do you think they're going to be good at after six months? If I practice tennis seven, eight hours a day, I'm going to be good at tennis. If I practice the piano seven, eight hours a day, I'm going to be good at playing the piano after six months.
If I practice distraction eight hours a day, I'm going to be really good at it. So when you look at companies, you really have to ask leaders, have you taught your teams how to focus and then have you then help them practice it? Because what companies typically tend to do is, you know, we're going to turn off social media,
they have no access to social media, we're going to have little rooms, they can go sit in and not be distracted. You're doing all these patches you're putting on them, you're not solving the problem which is actually teaching them how to focus.
I can go sit in a busy cafe and work for three hours without being distracted because I know how to focus. Companies take different approaches, right? They build all these cubicles, these rooms, all these things to block everything out
where they had missed the main point of actually teaching them how to focus. Because once you teach them how to focus, it doesn't matter where they are, they could do the middle of Times Square or in the middle of the desert, they'd still know how to focus.