Heard a TED talk titled "Unwavering Focus". The speaker made a very compelling case for the need to learn and practice "to focus". He used an analogy we all intuitively know and the research agrees with - we practice a task for several hours a day, several days a week, we will get better at that task, be it playing the violin, writing, or basketball. Along the same lines, if we practice being distracted with the same rigor and repetition, we are sure to become experts at being distracted. The smartphones and screen-time we have access to today compounds the problem even more, for both adults and kids. We often tell our kids to "focus" on something, but we ourselves are inept at focusing. Many of us do not have any idea how to Focus. Simply because we have rarely practiced "unwavering focus" in our daily lives. Dandapani also describes the process of meditation and focus as being related to "shifting your awareness to different parts of your mind or thinking". When we say 'my mind wanders too much', we are being inaccurate. It is our 'awareness' that is wandering from one thought to another.
Related to the same concept, I was recently contemplating work-life balance, and struggling to develop a plan of action to fix a persistent problem in multiple domains of my life - I do not have enough time to complete all my to-do's.  I have insufficient time to check off the "urgent" things on my to-do list. I can barely get through those. I struggle hard to find time for the "important" things. And I never get to those that are neither urgent nor important. This is not the way to survive - at work or at home. You cannot be a good mom or a good professional if you cannot manage your time and priorities. You cannot be an Einstein or Da Vinci with that modus operandi. That is not the path to greatness.
Just as is true during troubleshooting in research, so it is for troubleshooting in real-life. It is a signal-to-noise ratio problem. The noise has to reduce so that the "signal" can be seen. We either enhance the signal or reduce the noise. How do we do that? At work, say no to tasks that can wait, that are reactive (email being the biggest example), and regain control and priority of your own schedule. At home, reduce the noise by lessening focus on the unimportant things - the laundry can pile up, the cleaning can wait, the pile of papers on the desk can stay there, and most important of all - the cell phone can be kept away! Let's make a deliberate effort to practice and exercise more "focus" in our lives - let's enhance the intensity and quality of the signal. Lets shift our awareness to the things that matter the most and last the longest and give us the most joy. At work the focus needs to shift to - thinking about experiments, blocking out several hours of uninterrupted time for reading and thinking, making time for brainstorming, engaging in true scholarship, playing in the lab, doing real ground-breaking Science! At home, the focus needs to shift to - playing with a toddler, learning the meaning of true joy from a toddler, reading a book with your kids, creating artwork with your kids, engaging in a creative task (like writing a blog or painting a canvas), enjoying daily chores, baking muffins together, patiently eating a healthy meal with your family at the table, making memories.
Let's learn to focus again! Lets take control of our life back into our own hands! Amen to that!