Cal Newport

Focus

Whenever you get distracted, remember to focus. Focus on what is important to you, if you forgot see 20 Years Old.

Also see 80-20 Rule for 2 key rules that changed my life.

What if we got rid of the idea that we should strive to be smarter and more educated than everyone else?

  • Instead, we should strive to be more focused than everybody else.

Focus is the new IQ.

This is based on the belief on the premise that sustained concentration produces lots of value.

Context Switching kills you. The ability to focus is the skill that builds value in society.

In the 19th century, that was IQ (we needed more engineers, which is why being educated was important).

When you lose focus, Meditate.

Good ways that I found really helped me focus

Tunnel Vision

It is great to tunnel vision in my opinion. Because it allows you to focus. You only have so much Time, so you MUST tunnel vision to do things.

JC was someone who talked to me about maintaining laser focus back in 2021, which back in the days I didn’t appreciate as much, but now I really echo what he feels.

Ruby says it’s bad to tunnel vision. I get what she means in the sense that you lose sight of things when you tunnel vision. So once in a while, you need to look out and reflect.

Temptations

There are so many temptations trying to veer off my focus.

  • Dec 25th 2022: When I’m still working on my Poker AI, but have this temptation to start exploring other projects when I know really well that I don’t have the bandwidth. I’m just going to be jumping around without completing a project that I can be proud of.