I treat myself to the weekly luxury of
going online to indulge my never-ending curiosity. In so doing I recently stumbled
upon “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence” by Daniel Goleman. Quite impulsively
I clicked the “buy” button, much to my own surprise (as I am naturally
thrifty). What’s done is done – but I have no regrets. I have fallen in love
with this book and now keep revisiting it. Goleman is mesmerizing with a piercing
intellect and a conquering feather touch of intimacy.
Daniel Goleman is no stranger to those in
the field of education. His revolutionary work on emotional intelligence has
made him an ever shining star among both educators and corporate mentors.
Practically all of us have gone online only
to realize, many hours later, that we have little concrete to show for the last
few hours of clicking. There is simply no end to our unchecked online wanderings
as we pursue one pop-up and one link after the other. This is an exceedingly
common phenomenon in the age of prodigious search engines such as ‘Sheikh’ Google,
user-contributed data bases like ‘Imam’ Wikipedia, and a proliferation of posts
on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Goleman has something
very pertinent to say about this: “Life immersed in digital distractions create
a near constant cognitive overload. And that overload wears down our
self-control.” (p.31)
If we lose focus so easily in our online lives,
it would be safe to assume that we easily lose focus in our “real” lives too – failing
to differentiate between the things we have
to do and the things we merely want
to do.
We all know we can’t get to fully know
everything but have to be selective about those things we wish to gain an
in-depth knowledge of. For the latter we need focus, and Goleman’s book is an invaluable
tool for helping us navigate our waking life, turning it into a wakeful one. As
the subtitle says: focus is the hidden driver of excellence. If we want to
excel at anything, hard work alone won’t pay off. We need focused attention to
prevent our mental energy and attention from being dissipated and squandered by
fascinating and insidiously compelling stuff that is not pertinent to our query
or our quest. Even worse even, by an irresistible inner chatter. Goleman advises
us to “think of attention as a mental muscle that we can strengthen by a workout.
Memorization works that muscle, as does concentration. The mental analogue of
lifting a free weight over and over is noticing when our mind wanders and
bringing it back to target.” (p. 168)
This meta-awareness of noticing when our
mind wanders makes all the difference. If you want a “six pack brain”, heed Goleman’s
advice: “When your mind wanders - and you notice that it has wandered - bring
it back to your point of focus and sustain your attention there. And when your
mind wanders off again, do the same. And again. And again. And again.” (Ibid)
The book unfolds in seven parts beginning
with “The Anatomy of Attention” and ending with “The Big Picture”. The parts
that discuss Self-awareness, Reading others, Bigger contexts, Smart practice,
and The Well-focused Leader are sandwiched in-between. All the chapters contain
invaluable insights but chapter eighteen alone – How Leaders Direct Attention -
would make the book worth reading.
Goleman often goes philosophical, drawing
on ecological concerns, anecdotes of visionaries, and his broad personal
experience with many respect-inducing minds. All of this makes his work even more
readable and insightful. My word of caution to you would be not to take it as just
another self-help book printed on recycled paper. Because it is not. It stands
off from that commercial line.
“Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence” by
Daniel Goleman is both a mind- and life-changing work. I dare you to read, and
be changed by, it.
Goleman, D. (2013). FOCUS:
The Hidden Driver of Excellence. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
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