This is Steve Robbins.

Welcome to the Get It Done guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Focus.

It's not just for cameras.

A lot of life takes smarts to do right, and not just smarts, but enough attention so that you can actually learn something new.

Or so that you can allow your creativity to create

wonderful new realities, or so you can take sustained action, or, you know what, just put more

than two thoughts together at the same time on the same topic. That's called focus. And you can

focus on many levels. If you're creating a black curse to send all of the inhabitants of the

enchanted kingdom to a fishing village in Maine, you might need to sustain your focus for weeks, or months, or even more. Now, for that, you need project management

or get it done groups. That's a whole separate exercise. Today, we're going to look at the other

kind of focus, which is short-term focus. It's the kind of focus you need if you just want to

write a coherent blog post, or if you want to take your weekly deep dive into a fascinating new aspect of the mating habits of naked, blind,

mole rats, or if you want to come up with a strategy for convincing Eliza Dushku to make a guest

appearance on your podcast. Focus is hard. It's really hard. Focus is a skill. And in a world

that's trying to distract you at every turn, you have to treat it as a skill

and practice.

I mean, really practice.

So let's break it down.

We'll master the micro skills that go into focus.

Microskill number one.

Eliminate external interruptions.

...