Focus Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Focus shows you that attention is the thing that makes life worth living and helps you develop more of it to become focused in every area of life: work, relationships and your own attitude towards life and the planet.

We’re almost a decade into the rise of the smartphone empire and among many great benefits, we suffer one phenomenal loss as a result – our attention goes out the window.

If your life feels like a series of quick hits and dopamine fixes, it’s time to put the smartphone on airplane mode for a while. Relying on these devices more than on our minds has left us with an attention span that’s less than that of a goldfish. Now that’s something to worry about.

Daniel Goleman aims to give you some of it back with Focus, and calls it the hidden driver of excellence. It is a book about mindfulness, willpower, leadership, empathy and success.

Here are 3 lessons to help you zone in on what’s important:

1. Once your brain feels fried, just let your thoughts wander.
2. You can’t do anything better for your willpower than work on something you love.
3. Think of distant problems as immediate to better plan for the future.

Do you feel focused? If not, we’re about to fix it!

Studies have recently found that the psychological component of willpower is a lot bigger than we thought, meaning most of it actually comes from your mind, not your body. The reason your willpower gets stronger if you do something you love then, is that if your work reflects your goals, it becomes effortless.

Late nights, confronting big obstacles and the patience you need until you see it through come a lot easier when you’re 100% convinced that what you’re doing is the exact right thing for you to do.

As an example Goleman mentions George Lucas, who, when creating the original Star Wars, went rogue and split from his production company – an incredibly difficult move at the time – because he was afraid his creative vision would be compromised. In the end, because he believed in his idea, he did everything that was necessary to make it a success.

I bet you have a dream. A crazy one. Something no one really cares about, but you. And even before you knew that working on it might boost your willpower, I’m sure you wanted to. But you didn’t.

It’s the first 10 pages of your manuscript that are sitting inside your desk drawer since 2012. The scaffold that collects dust in your attic. The high school reunion party you never threw. These things make life worth living, and are what we all want to accomplish in that short time we’re here – yet we keep procrastinating on them, because they don’t have deadlines.

The regret of having had a shitty life is too far away to cause you to panic now, because it’ll only come when you’re too old to change it.

But Goleman says if you imagine these problems as serious, immediate threats (for example climate change, same thing) right now, then you can stop choosing what makes you happy in the short-term, but doesn’t solve the problem.