Zoom in & Focus

Zoom out only if needed - avoiding the 10k things.

In photography

Imagine yourself standing in a park. Before you is a flower bed with beautiful flowers. You have setup your camera on a tripod with a telephoto lens.
You notice that bees come and go to one of the flowers, so you zoom in & focus in the general area of that flower. 🌺
You then zoom in again & focus on the flower itself.
The last step before capturing the image is… Zoom in & focus on the bee.

In crafting a novel / short story / Blog post

After choosing the general idea you will — with or without planning — need to start writing. 📝
If you have an overall plan you will zoom in & focus on the chapter.
You will then zoom in & focus on the sentence you are writing. 
(getting in the zone)

In using your calendar

I use Google to sync my calendar over all devices. Allow me to assume that you somehow plan similarly with your tool of choice. 📆
You do not start your day in the month view, 
neither do you zoom in on the week view.

You zoom in & focus on the day view. Today, I have planned events (17) which include Draft, Revision, Publish and other things.
You prioritize according to time needed and free time.
You zoom in & focus on one event to tackle right now.

In reading

I read nowadays only in Kindle. 
Having been at it since the very first version, I have gathered an impressive library. Thanks to Amazon for the new filter unread.

You don’t have hundreds of pages of books to choose from. 🤷🏼‍♂️
You don’t have 2 books to any specific topic to choose from. (photography, writing, philosophy, mindfulness, history…)
You zoom in & focus on a single book to any topic that interests you and set them as unread.
You have 1 to 1 ½ pages of books to choose from at any given time.

In life

Life never happens tomorrow, or this afternoon or an hour from now. Life is only ever now, here. 🎯
Your body is only ever here, now. It is the mind that becomes disconnected from the body. The mind is somewhere else, in some other time.

You believe the truth of the paragraph above. You want to learn or are learning to live as a whole being.
With increasing frequency, you notice when your mind is not united with your body.
You zoom in & focus on where your body is, and on what you see, hear, smell, taste and touch.

The ten thousand things

At any given moment of any day there are said to be 10.000 things vying for your attention or focus.
Words, images, feelings, emotions, situations, people, thoughts...on & on. Each thing yells "pay attention, I'm important!"
Learning to focus completely on the person you're talking to, the image you are capturing or even just your breathing is an art well worth learning.

Zooming out is always an option

In photography, you can zoom out from the bee to capture an overall view of the park. (or the two insects in the image above)
In crafting a novel, you can zoom out and look at your plot points again, possibly rearranging some scenes.
In your calendar, you can zoom out once a week / month to make sure everything fits with your plan.
In reading, having completed the novel, you can remove the unread filter in order to choose the next novel to read.
In life, you can always plan to construct that short story inside your head while taking a shower.

Zoom in & focus — zoom out only as needed.

Thank you so much for Reading. Feel free to participate in our chat.