Proof that you already know how to do this

You can’t teach focus.

There is no guidebook that helps creative professionals figure out where their focus should be, how to apply their energy to it, and how to execute work in the face of the unrelenting succession of pleasurable distractions that surround them on a daily basis.

The good news is, your ability to concentrate might be stronger than you realize. It all depends on how you frame it.

For example, when a professional golfer stands over a putt, he hears everything.

Murmurs from the crowd, porta potty doors slamming, birds chirping, cell phones buzzing and camera shutters clicking.

He can’t not hear those sounds. No matter how focused he is on the ball, it’s impossible to tune out the noise.

And yet, he’s still able to perform his job competently. Sinking that birdie putt on the seventeenth green to tie up the score is simply matter of course, no pun intended.

But how? Does that athlete possess a constitution with an unusual ability to concentrate, or is it a skill he worked at?

It’s both. Because certain people do have an amazing innate ability to focus on what they’re doing, while still processing other stimuli outside and inside of their minds.

While other personalities are easily distracted, bounce from one thought to the next very quickly, and can’t finish a task if their life depended on it.

However, all creative professionals can boost their ability to lock in at a moment’s notice, anytime, anywhere, and get to work. They can take control over their psychic environment, and take extreme responsibility for the energy they bring to the world.

Here’s helpful exercise to deepen your ability to concentrate that has been a game changer for me. The tool is called Accidental Preparation.

Consider one thing in your life over which you’ve had a lifelong obsession. It might be a hobby, interest, passion, intellectual pursuit, or extracurricular activity.

Doesn’t matter if it’s dopey or bizarre, as long as it always has the potential to galvanize you and never thwarts your pursuit of joy.

And now know this. That thing is your ticket to concentration. Because regardless of your personality, or the story you like to tell yourself about your distractibility, that lifelong obsession is incontrovertible proof that you already know how to focus.

It’s a matter of deconstructing something you’ve done intuitively and abstractly for years, genericizing it, and then replicating it into other areas of life.

This exercise will prove that while you can’t teach yourself to focus, you can uncover your existing ability to concentrate, and use it in service of your creative dreams.

Next time you’re feeling sensitive to the clamorous pull of distraction, take the training you already have and apply it.

Use the history of yesterday to help you focus today, and you’ll execute creative work you’re proud of tomorrow.

Talk about a hole in one.

Are you reaching for something that’s already inside yourself?