Webinar Recording: The Joy of the Focus Session

I’ve broken this webinar recording into two parts:

1. Part I – My Talk: I share how to bring joy, playfulness, curiosity, gratitude and love to your focus session. (See notes)
2. Part II – Questions & Answers: I answered questions about doing your important task longer than 10 minutes, how to choose important tasks, how to focus in a busy office, and more.

Part I: Leo’s Talk (with notes)

You can download this video here, or download just the audio. Or watch below.

Here are the notes from my talk (video is below the notes):

We live lives of distraction and busyness. How can we give ourselves space to find the deliciousness in focus and single-tasking?

The problem: When we get started in the morning, often we get onto our phones or computers to check email, messages, news, social media … and then we keep going, in an endless stream of distraction and busyness, maybe getting things done but never really finding focus.

When we set out to do an important, meaningful task … it’s difficult, because creating the space for it is not our usual habit. It feels like a chore, to set aside the time and mental space to focus on something deeply. It can feel like we’re making a sacrifice.

But what if we looked at it as a treat instead? A gift to ourselves — giving ourselves the gift of space and the permission we need to really give ourselves over to one thing.

In this way, a focus session can be seen as luxurious. A joyful act of self care. Like taking time to relax in a hot tub!

Well, maybe not exactly like that. But it certainly can be delicious.

Let’s look at how we can make it that way:

• When we start a focus session, we clear space for it, setting aside distractions and the usual busywork. We can look at this space as a break for ourselves, a nice pause in the stress of the day. A fresh breath.
• We pause as we begin to set an intention: to be fully with this task, to give ourselves to it because it’s important, it serves other people. It’s an act of devotion. We can feel this intention as something beautiful.
• As we get started with the task, we might start a timer, but not focus so much on the timer as on the task itself. We can pour ourselves fully into this task, savoring the doing of the task like we’d savor a delicious fruit. Find the deliciousness in the task.
• Can we play, and make the task free and joyful?
• Can we be curious, and explore?
• Can we find appreciation for what we’re doing, for the privilege of being able to do it? Can we see the joy in this gift?
• Can we feel the love for the people we serve, as we do the task? So that the doing of the task becomes an act of love.
• As we close, we bow in gratitude. We notice how wonderful this focus session was. We appreciate that we got this break in our busy day to give ourselves over to something meaningful.

This is a symptom of how we do everything in our day — rushing through things, just wanting to get through them.

What if we elevated this to something beyond the ordinary?

Some ways to bring sacredness to our morning space:

1. Recognize this space something to be appreciated
2. Create space, and don’t cram it full of things
3. Be meticulous about the space
4. Set Intention & be deliberate
5. Focus on appreciation
6. Don’t rush to finish

Listen to the talk on the video for more details on these items.

This kind of devotion increases the depth of the practice.

Part II: Questions & Answers

You can download this video here, or download just the audio. Or watch below.

In this 2nd part of the webinar, I answered some great questions about:

• This month, could we allow ourselves to work on a focused task fir longer than 10 minutes, or is there value to us by ending after 10” and moving on to something else?
• How do I choose from many different important tasks I have to do?
• How do you approach tasks that repel? Some tasks you enjoy doing forward Other tasks I tend to shun and they gravitate to the bottom of the list , and often get moved to the next day?
• You mentioned if resistance comes up, be with the feeling instead of running from it. How much to be with that (and not do the task) and at what point does that become avoidance of the task?
• How to create a space at work with lots of people around, many opportunities for interruption ?
• Is it more beneficial to choose a task that’s more personally meaningful (like creating something or writing) ? I decided on clearing out stuff but struggling to find joy in sorting papers.