Fascinated By Fascination

The most consistent factor I’ve seen in success is sustained attention over time. The ability to focus on one thing for hours, years, or decades, making small consistent improvements as they do. The ability to put your attention where you want it, to resist boredom and distraction until the job is done, or the skill learned. The ability to focus in the moment, on one thing at a time.

While there are certainly other traits, that focus seems more critical than anything else. WHAT you focus on might be modeling, or balanced living, or your heartbeat (healing) or your breathing (yoga) or the quality of flow (various arts), or any number of other things, but the attention itself is the consistent factor. It can and should be developed or measured as a quality unto itself, separate from its specific application.

When our children complain of lack of focus, or boredom, we offer them support, encouragement, and possibly platitudes about the importance of this quality in the adult world, and why they need it. But…if it is so important and foundational, wouldn’t it be best to be alarmed when there are things that we need to do, it would be healthy to do, or success-positive to do, that we cannot motivate ourselves to do consistently?

Yes, it is probably fine to find ways to distract ourselves, entertain ourselves, change things up, and so forth. That’s fine, but if you have established the minimum amount of sustained action necessary to accomplish a goal (some daily thing like reading, writing, exercising, connecting with a…