Focus

When working towards a goal, some of us tend to focus our whole minds and attention on the achievement of that goal to the exclusion of all else. For example, a man may shut out his family and friends entirely while working on a big project, something that once completed will bring in a great deal of money and give him more personal time and freedom to spend with his loved ones.

During this time though, the people that do not get the man's attention tend to feel unwanted and draw away from him. Other people often do not have the vision that he has and do not see the perfectly valid reasons why he is unavailable. After awhile of being what they consider ignored, people begin to feel unappreciated and resentful towards him. His focus is for a good purpose but it is to the detriment of all of his relationships. He wants to believe that the sacrifices he is making will all be worth it in the long run. But what if he loses the people he cares about before the project is over?

What can be done to prevent this? For one, acknowledgement that those he cares about exist and miss him would be a good start. Setting an expectation of when the project will be over and his time and energy will be available for other things would also be good. Probably the biggest step though would be still finding a way to set aside time for friends and family even if it is in a more limited capacity than all involved would like. It shows those people that they matter too.

Studies have been done that show spending too much of your time and energy focused on one thing actually decreases your ability to accomplish that thing. A person needs to have distractions. When talking about learning for example, it has been shown that after the first fifteen minutes of a lecture on a given subject students tend to tune out. Anything not learned by that point generally is not learned. But, if the students are allowed even just a single minute to maybe get up and walk around and focus on something different and then come back to the lecture, learning begins to happen again. Teachers are more successful if they teach in short bursts rather than droning on for long periods of time.

The same thing happens with people at work. After a certain period of time, productivity drops off because your brain loses interest in whatever it is that is going on. It has been shown that people can get more and better work done in a day, if they take a five minute break once an hour. The reason for this is that your mind can more easily find solutions to a problem if it has not been staring at that same issue for hours on end with nothing to break up the monotony.

So while being laser focused on a task is good, it is also good to take frequent short breaks to clear your head and then come back with a fresh perspective. And when you are taking  some of these breaks it is a good idea to let your loved ones know that you are thinking about them and appreciate the patience they are showing you by not being cross with your absence.
Remember, all things in moderation (even moderation).