Focus

I just spent the last three days with about 200 of my closest friends (fellow extras on a movie set). For ten to twelve hours a day we were holed up in a hot, low-ceilinged basement while small groups of us were taken upstairs to be in scenes. The experience mostly boiled down to a whole lot of "hurry-up-and-wait" (as extra work usually does) and with the numbers present we felt like a herd of cattle being prodded along, but the experience wasn't all drudgery and pain.

One pleasant surprise for me personally was that when I was upstairs filming I was sitting one seat away from an A-list Hollywood actress you would recognize if I used her name. The actress was very polite and kind and is a tremendously gifted artist. She totally earned my respect in our three days together.

One thing I noticed about this actress was the way she could be interacting with her co-stars and others on the set while the cameras and lighting were getting set up and rehearsals were going on, but then, after all the directions were called out by the camera operators, assistant directors, and the sound people, and just before the main director yelled "Action!" this actress would lower her head, take a deep breath, close her eyes and quietly say to herself, "Focus."

This powerful ritual reminded me again of the importance of focus in our lives. Whether it's in business, sports, academia or acting, when it comes to success, we are constantly reminded of the benefits of focus.  And many of those touting the benefits of focus aren't simply doing so from a self-help perspective; there is real science involved in this claim.

Without boring you with a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo, let me just say this: Studies prove that the brain has millions of bits of information available to it at any one time. This data is generated by our senses: sight, smell, touch, etc...,. Meanwhile, our brains can only process so many of these bits of information at any one time. The brain has automatic filters that operate to prioritize the data that must be processed. The rest of the information is filtered out (ignored) or stored away for future use.

In other words, we have the ability to selectively concentrate on certain items, essentially decluttering the flow of data that is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Focusing amounts to a filtering out and a fine-tuning of what needs to be paid attention to. This is what's happening when a mother is in the midst of a deep sleep of her own and yet hears the softest cry imaginable coming from the baby's room. It's also what happens when an actress stops clowning with her friends and colleagues and consciously draws a laser-like focus on the task at hand and then goes out and knocks her audiences' socks off in a movie scene.

Ours is an age of distraction and focus is in short supply; everyone feels required to multi-task. The simple truth, however, is that if we truly want to be successful - if we want to enjoy the kind of success my new actress friend consistently enjoys - we're going to have to learn to focus as she does. Some of us will have a harder time doing this than others, but all of us will benefit from it. You can be sure of that.