Focus is more than removing distractions
#112 - a raft of School Captain quandaries
Hi there,
A quite dull weekend after what was a busy week as ever - don’t know what’s up with March but it’s a second year in a row of it being a bit manic.
The week started with around 4 hours of interviews, with the other school captains, for the opening in our Deputy Head position. It was a gruelling experience for us but a great one; I was struck by how different people can approach the same question and also learn more about what they think our school can do better.
The highlight of the week would be the annual Careers Fair on Friday; not having a set role for the day, I roamed around, welcoming the speakers, checking in on the seminars going on across the school (my pedometer loved that!) and overall just being a student representative for the day.
It’s been a week of reflection and learning for me about priorities, saying no and making choices.
It started on Monday with having to come up with a shortlist of the candidates. It was difficult to figure out which person deserved to rank higher, and try to rationalise our scores out of 10, especially because your anchoring number is based on a ‘feel’ and then you move up or down based on your notes.
Wednesday afternoon presented me with another tricky choice: cricket training or Y9 House Maths?
My initial plan was to do House Cross Country (which was then cancelled) followed by bowling in the nets after school.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t get any officers who would run the Y9 maths after school. I was left with a choice:
Do I put myself first and prioritise cricket, with only a few sessions to go before our first match? My physical health should come first.
Or do I choose not to knowingly disappoint a group of twenty Year 9s (who love Maths like me) and protect the face of the team by running the House Maths?
A question of self over letting others down. Failing to heed advice from my Economics teacher in October - “You don’t like to let others down, but it’s totally ok, it’s part of life” - I printed off the materials and ran a (crazily chaotic) House Maths.
And to top it off, Thursday after school also left me partly frustrated. After speaking with a teacher, I planned to have a quick look at the ‘Year 7 Celebration Evening’ going on (with other officers running the event) before going home on time to my weekly timetable. In the end, circumstances fell that I stayed for a bit - and I was having an awesome time.
I got to say hi to parents, watch Year 7s show immense confidence on stage, get to know the many things they’ve been up to (and realise Year 7 is a lot more interesting than Year 13) and, overall, be a ‘school ambassador’. But my watch was ticking away: “Adi, you need to go home and do STEP and do your revision”. Eventually, I got home too late to be able to do everything I needed to and it was the first day I hadn’t done any STEP preparation since the start of February; another instance of not focusing on your own ‘selfish’ needs.
Story time over; this recurring pattern this week prompted me to think about why things fell the way they did and what I can learn from it. It reminds me of an excellent article on the blog Farnam Street titled “The Focus to Say No”. Here are a few excerpts and thoughts around it.
Saying yes to a request feels good at the moment. So we say yes to things we know won’t move us forward. We say yes because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We say yes to be polite. We say yes out of obligation. We say yes because we ‘should.’
Whereas, perhaps, the default answer should be and then you should be convinced to say yes. The reason? The scarce resources we blame in microeconomics. For us, they are in the form of our time, energy, money and attention.
We all have the same number of hours in a week. What separates people is how they use them.
You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
The blog post also explores a quote from Steve Jobs about how
“people think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
This is particularly pertinent when you have a clean slate, like an 18-year-old before his career and life in the real world starts, for example 😉. But you also have a clean slate every evening when you get home from work, on what you want to do that evening. Even if you have non-autonomous tasks or deadlines, you can choose what order you do them in.
Often in life, we have so many demands on us that our free will can actually be restrained. Therefore, we need to use the little choice we do have properly, to our advantage, in a way that makes sense and puts our interests forward.
Saying no is like saving your money in the bank, whereas saying yes is spending it. Most of us are in overdraft. Before you say yes, ask yourself if it’s necessary.
Most of you are probably like me: busy, spinning lots of plates and wanting a sense of control over managing these projects whilst looking after yourself and maintaining success. This is why is important to realise that ‘focus’ comes in 2 parts: blocking out unwanted distractions and being ok with passing up on other opportunities, once you’ve chosen one that you know is best for you.
And that can be difficult: it was hard for me to leave the event on Thursday because I was thoroughly enjoying listening to the Year 7’s work and staying would’ve stuck to my ethos, as I’ve hit upon in the past couple of weeks, of “doing what a good school captain would do”. But, as I’ve learnt (I’ve regained some ground now by the way 😁), you need to let go and say “That’s enough time towards School Captain this week, focus on yourself”. It can be a job or activity you love but being addicted to it, even if it’s a lovely thing like a voluntary self-improving job, isn’t beneficial in the long term.
A useful solution to this is the idea of “Hell YEAH or No” by Derek Sivers. To avoid over-commitment, you need to be able to be properly excited about any obligation you say yes to. After all, it’s a loan you’re borrowing that future you will have to pay back in time or energy (that’s such a good analogy).
People think the advice of ‘learn to say no’ usually applies to the ‘bad stuff’. Actually, in a world of so many possibilities, we need to be able to reject good opportunities to make room for great opportunities. The pie of our time is finite so discipline and self-strictness is required to choose who or what gets slices of it.
I’ve already had one great conversation about this with a friend on Wednesday, would love to have even more dialogue about this issue in your life as well. Stop me in the corridor to chat if you’re at school or stop me in the virtual corridor by dropping a reply.
Podcast of the week🎙️
The Knowledge Project: #177 Shane Parrish: A Glimpse Into Clear Thinking
Another shout-out to Farnam Street this week! Short, to the point and a great set of principles worth reminding ourselves about.
What I’m grateful for this week 🙏
Serious contenders are Ayaan and James, who helped me out with the Maths on Wednesday. I can’t imagine what I would have done without them. But the award goes to Mrs Brown in the Library who marked me. info 3 periods in a row when I was busy with a Careers Fair, without a fuss. Sorry if I gave you deja vu by the end of it miss! 🙈
Quote of the week 💬
On a related note to this week’s Ray of Sunlight.
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. Warren Buffett
To make sure I can pull out a slightly more useful post for next time - and hence be intentional about the next 7 days - I’m off for a weekly (but with my Sunday night squeeze, monthly at the moment 🙈) review…after some delicious Biryani from Mum (Happy Mother’s Day to all! 👩👦)
Adi