The Power of Focus and Activating Memory

Focus is one of the most important powers the mind possesses. Through the gateway of focus, the mind puts perception to work and arrives at the best conclusions and the soundest choices. Thinking moves according to your focus, and it shapes the course of your personality. By increasing your dose of focus, you can launch your skills and deliver the highest level of professional mastery. Through skilled focus, you move toward excelling in your work environment and make progress in your career and in the other paths of your life. You can achieve high-quality professional mastery compared with the level of skilled performance of your colleagues. You can make technical progress, achieve professional excellence, and increase your chances of recognition and promotion. Strengthening the faculty of focus benefits you in every area of your life and gives you the best mental capacities and cognitive skills. Through focus you put your mind to work and concentrate on your performance, so that you speak with the best language and eloquence. Through focus you manage your feelings and cultivate the best emotional state, and you handle your relationships in the best way. Attention to focus is a fundamental task in your thinking, and it is essential for governing your mind and for managing the planning of your life. Through focus you make progress and achieve your interests. Your first task begins with putting to work all the intelligence rooted in the nerves of your brain and the system of your mind. To the extent that you activate good retention, you gain perceptual intelligence and cognitive awareness, and you find the full answer to your question. To the extent that you practice the exercise of focus, you stimulate the neural mechanisms, and correct, well-organized information comes to you. You find the full answer to every personal matter and life situation. By starting to develop your focus fitness, you begin a new direction in your life, reap immediate gains, and find important solutions to the events of your circumstances. You can begin increasing your focus fitness from this very moment.

There are several methods of focusing that you should take into account

Having precisely defined goals: Defining and specifying goals precisely is a key to the process of focus. If my goals are clear in my mind, my focus is strong and does not scatter trying to work out the goals every time I take a step. Breaking things into small pieces, or what is called an action plan: Having big goals is good, but having an action plan is very important. An action plan lets you know how to work, how to obtain resources, and where you are and where you want to go with your work. Breaking big goals into small ones for execution is excellent, as it gives you the motivation to start and finish things in a single session. Setting your priorities continuously: To know which task to start with first, you must always set priorities. Some tasks are more important than others, and some come with more urgency than others. I have found that working on the urgent tasks, followed by the less urgent ones, has the greatest effect on work, and this is excellent for focus at work, because it allows me to complete things on time and also to receive the greatest benefit. Tracking progress continuously: Every one of us wants to improve his life, yet it is easy to start a journey with good intentions and motivation, and hard to keep going and complete the path of commitment to those principles. So tracking the progress made each time lets you see further than you think, gives you greater clarity about what you have done so far, and lets you measure the effort expended and how much energy you have left to complete the journey. Planning for the future without failure or fading enthusiasm: We mentioned in the previous point that tracking progress lets you know how much energy you have left to complete the journey. Here, focusing on the remaining effort helps strengthen your commitment to the starting points you set earlier. Some people who neglect this future planning fail halfway, whereas whoever applies the previous points will find within himself the drive to continue, because the task has now become small in size and easy to finish, God willing and by His power. Personally, I have found that looking at my goals and action plan periodically lets me estimate how much time something will take and determine the best time to sit down and work on it. Reward yourself when you complete a stage: From time to time, look back at the progress you have made and the tasks you have completed. Take a minute and look at the length of the road you have traveled, and remember that the remaining journey is shorter than what you have covered so far. Reward yourself with the feeling that you are close to the summit. You will feel tremendous energy running through your veins, driving you strongly toward the rest of the journey. Personally, every time I complete a part of the action plan, I reward myself and look at what I have achieved so far, and I truly find an extra motivation to continue. Breaking the deadly routine: The proverb says, "Routine is deadly," and it really is: deadly to talents, to drives, to motivations, and so on. So it must always be broken, for example by taking a short break, changing the atmosphere of the place you are in, watching something different, or turning your current thoughts to something you love and strongly desire. Get up to pray, or step out into the fresh air outside the place where you are. Take a glass of lemon drink and enjoy it slowly, and you will find yourself freed from the shackles of routine and will see that your energy has been renewed to continue your work. Having positive patterns in the daily routine: Each of us suffers from deadly routine, and there is no escaping routine. Even if you break it, you will return to it, and you may find yourself needing to break it again. If you apply the previous point too often, you will find a great deal of time wasted and will not be able to finish the assigned work on time. So, to avoid this mistake, we must find positive patterns and habits within the daily routine. For example, working in an air-conditioned environment: the feeling of freshness will allow you and help you keep working for as long as possible. Also, working while listening to the Qur'an at a relatively low volume, for as God Almighty said in His Noble Book, after "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful": "Verily, in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest" (meaning). The tranquility of the soul relaxes you and lets you continue and focus more and more. Removing temptations from your mind: In any field of work there are always temptations and distractions from our tasks, and in our world today temptations have multiplied in kind and form. If we want to work, succeed and focus intensely, we must remove these temptations from our thinking. The internet itself, for example, is one of these temptations. Say you are working on something and want complete focus on it: the devil will come and remind you of the internet, friends, Twitter, Facebook and so on, tempting you to leave what you are working on and move to the internet to waste time on something pointless. In this way you are distracted from your concerns and leave your work for another day, and if you continue at this pace, your work is lost, and so is the focus you were seeking. Always remember the results achieved: Instead of focusing more than necessary on the action plan and on the work remaining to be finished, give yourself the chance to look at what has been accomplished, especially the positive results achieved. This gives you a feeling of satisfaction with yourself, with what has been achieved, and with the work and the path you are walking, and this point brings great benefits. For example, suppose you are working on something outside the field you love. If you pass through stages of it, then pause for a moment and look at how far you have come, you will feel satisfied with yourself and feel a great incentive to complete the path. This point is very important and must be paid attention to.