Fast Focus: A Quick-Start Guide To Mastering Your Attention, Ignoring Distractions, And Getting More Done In Less Time! covers exactly what the title suggests. It helps readers improve their productivity with the greatest weapon against procrastination: focus. To build their focus “muscles” the book helps readers drop the tiny things in our lives that steal our productivity.
What is Fast Focus About?
Even with all the productivity advice and tools that come with modern life, avoiding distraction is still a problem. Most people blame their willpower, but Fast Focus offers a different explanation. The human brain is hardwired to notice stuff. Back in the days of your caveman ancestors, this was perfectly fine. Keeping a vigilant eye on any change in your environment kept you alive.
For the modern human, the biggest “threat” to our environment is often a missed social media or email notification. Because your brain can’t distinguish between real threats (like a lion getting ready to eat you) and things that appear “threatening” (like not checking email for 15 minutes), you respond on autopilot. You check your email and social media just to be sure that everything is OK.
You don’t take time to analyze why you lose focus. You blame yourself for lacking the willpower to push through.
Fast Focus challenges readers to break out of this cycle by shining a light on the details in their internal and external environment that push you to distraction. These things include stress, physical or mental clutter, social media, and your persistence practice of multitasking. These distractions seem innocent enough. People assume it only takes five minutes to check their email but it ends up being 15 minutes. They expect to do a quick Google search and end up hours later with eyes glued to screen.
Breaking out of this cycle, at least in Fast Focus, isn’t about adding another tool or new strategy created by a time management guru It’s about reducing or eliminating (if you can) obstacles to your focus. It’s about adding in everyday things that you take for granted like breaks or a few minutes of exercise so that you can build focus.
Author Damon Zahariades is a content marketing strategist and freelance writer who left corporate America in search of productivity. He found it in his own company and shares the information in the books and blog posts he writes.
What Was Best About Fast Focus?
Often when people try to fix their problems with productivity, they tend to focus on the “big” categories like scheduling, prioritization, and willpower. They tend to forget the little details, like your mental state or the fact you had three cups of coffee before you sat down to work. Fast Focus pinpoints these tiny things and offers quick solutions (aka “hacks”) for readers to take charge of their productivity. This is extremely helpful for readers who want fast answers to the question “What are some fast ways to boost my productivity?”
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
Fast Focus isn’t a comprehensive book on productivity by any stretch of the imagination. It only treats the factors that move you closer to distraction. This is helpful at the micro level, but not at the macro level. Readers learn how to deal with personal distractions, but they don’t learn solutions for the entire workplace. A separate volume of the book geared toward leaders might help out with this.
Why Read Fast Focus?
Fast Focus deals with procrastination on a micro level, the place where most people feel unproductive. As mentioned above, people tend to look for answers to their worries about productivity outside themselves. They look for the right book, the right course or the right guru. While a book or productivity guru can be helpful, people ultimately return back to their usual, unproductive self once the motivation wears off. Fast Focus offers a way for readers to take personal ownership of their unproductive behavior. The book accomplishes this by focusing on the tiny details that chip away at your focus. By stopping these tiny cracks in your focus, you leave an opportunity to add in positive, focus-building habits that will transform your life.
