Skip to main content

How Do I Focus?

How do I focus? 
#DigiLitSunday

This is a great question with several entry points and no easy answers. 

I could write about how I stay focused, or not, by getting things done despite a myriad external and internal work demands. 

Or, I could write about how I maintain a focus on what matters. 

Or, I could write about how I make effective use of my time and stay on task. 

Focusing is a disciplined response to something important or valuable. As a result, focusing is about paying attention and following through, no matter what else is going on at the time. 

Truth #1: I have a hard time focusing on just one thing.  

Truth #2:  It's really hard to focus on more than one thing without compromising something else. Starting a project is easy. However, completing a project is not. Yet, the satisfaction of having done so is what makes it all worthwhile.

Truth #3: I take on way too many projects and responsibilities and tend to lose my focus. I forget what my purpose was for starting the project and then it doesn't seem so important anymore. I have a hard time saying, "No," or "Not now". (Note to self: Learn how to do that.) 

We can practice for the big projects (those that matter and help us grow) by saying "no" to less important things that don't matter and don't help us grow. This way, when it's time to create something or follow through on a commitment, we will know why we took it on. We won't be overwhelmed and become paralyzed. 

For those of us who teach, the day-to-day demands on our time are difficult to manage. It's easy to lose track of what's urgent and what isn't. To lose focus of what's important and meaningful. Everything appears equally important and urgent. 

In fact, this urgency about every new initiative in schools is just plain odd. If everything is equally important, then nothing is important. Isn't that what we tell our students when they are first learning to annotate text? If you underline everything in a text, then nothing is worth focusing on. If every initiative is equally important, then nothing requires our undivided attention. We can make a haphazard attempt at a lot of things and therefore do nothing well.

We lose our way when we lose our focus. And, so do our students. 

At school our focus has to be on our students. 
No one else. 
Nothing else.  

So, back to the question that @MargaretGSimon posed this week on her blog: how do I focus? 

I focus by slowing down.

I focus by taking stock of what's happening with my students, myself and my family.  

I focus by taking a metaphorical step or two away from a situation to decide what's important...for now. 

I focus one project at a time so that I get really good at starting AND finishing just ONE thing.

I focus by remembering what's important at any given moment.  

That's it. 

What about you? How do you focus?

Cross posted to Reflections on the Teche
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading Strategies Book - Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension

The strategy lessons highlighted in Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension, in The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo are critical to students’ engagement and comprehension, as well as their ability to write literary essays, or even book reviews, summaries and reflective pieces about books. If students aren’t able to talk about books in a way that is invigorating and joyful, they will be less likely to develop an interest in growing ideas for writing about books. In her introduction to this chapter, Jennifer Serravallo, reminds us that when conversations go well, children are inspired by what they read and are motivated to keep reading. However, when conversations fall flat, then kids get bored and tune out. How do we avoid this situation and teach kids to  have  focused conversations about books?  The answer is easy: teach kids  strategies to help them develop effective conversa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are we listening?

A child sits alone with a ripped worksheet packet on his desk. He appears to be singing or subvocalizing something though no one hears him. Or, perhaps they're ignoring him. The teacher stands at the front of the room teaching on the SmartBoard. The children follow along in their worksheets. Except the child sitting alone. He is in his own world. No one engages him and he engages no one. My heart aches for this child. He is physically and emotionally removed from the class. I ask him why his paper is ripped. (It's not an accidental rip.) He says he did that on a different day. When he had been frustrated about the work. He tells me that he sometimes sits by himself because the work is too hard for him. He later tells me that he sits by himself because the teacher thinks he talks too much during the lesson.  He says he does that because he wants to find out about the "lives of the other children". My first impulse is to rescue him from the wrongheade...
10 comments
Read more

A Slice of Life Story: Wishin' and Hopin', A Christmas Story by Wally Lamb

I normally only write about teaching related issues on this blog.  But, I've decided to make some changes in the New Year.  One change I am making is to start posting book reviews, or posts prompted by books I'm reading, that are in some way connected to teaching, learning, schooling, or education in general.  I aim to broaden the scope of my blog so that I don't find myself frantically searching for a topic to post about every week; this has stopped me from posting on a regular basis.  The purpose of making this change isn't to proliferate my blog with trivial posts, but rather to allow myself a broader scope from which to ruminate about learning in the broadest sense of the word. Wally Lamb's Wishin' and Hopin', A Christmas Story  is a great read and not just at Christmas time.  Lamb was able to take a one-time fictitious event - the 1964 Christmas play production by the students at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School - and build a story around it tha...
10 comments
Read more