This week's book: "Hyperfocus" by Chris Bailey.
"The state of your attentional space determines the state of your life."
Chris Bailey
It's Saturday, so let's pull the week together.
This week was about the most valuable, most finite thing you own: your attention. Bailey's main idea is right there in the quote. The state of your attention is the state of your life. What you pay attention to, over a day and over a lifetime, becomes what your life actually is. Which makes how you spend it one of the most important decisions you'll ever make, and one most of us make by accident.
Here's the week in a few lines. We started with the two modes Bailey lays out. Hyperfocus is pouring your full attention onto one important thing, with no distractions. Scatterfocus is the opposite, deliberately letting your mind wander so it can make connections and spark new ideas. One gets the work done. The other figures out what's worth doing. I told you how I found my own hyperfocus, not by discovering the perfect next thing, but by finally letting four other possibilities go and committing to this one. I admitted how far I'd drifted from scatterfocus, from the long, phone-free walks where a lot of my best ideas were born.
My honest take on the book: it's genuinely useful and very readable, and if you feel scattered and unfocused right now, it'll give you a clearer way of thinking about where your attention goes. I'll be straight, though, it's more a clean discussion of ideas you may have run into before than a pile of brand-new science. But the central theme, hyperfocus and scatterfocus as two deliberate modes you can choose, is genuinely useful, and I've been using it all week. This book is worth your time.
Now here's where the week ended up for me, and it's kind of personal. You may experience something similar if you read the book.
If the state of my attention really is the state of my life, then the question isn't just how to focus better at my desk. I’m already decent at that. For me, it's where I'm focusing my attention across my whole life. And a while back I came up with an answer that's stuck with me. Every morning, I try to ask myself three simple questions:
What will I do today for my health?
What will I do today to move toward my purpose?
What will I do today to strengthen a relationship that matters? (Including, some days, my relationship with myself.)
Health. Purpose. Love. That's it. Those three are where I've decided my attention belongs, because when I look back on a life, I don't think I'll measure it in tasks completed or dollars earned. I'll measure it in whether I took care of my body, did work that mattered, and loved the people around me. Everything else is noise competing for a very limited resource.
Bailey taught me the mechanics of attention this week. But the harder question isn't how to focus. It's on what. And those three are my answer.
One challenge for the week ahead
For the next seven days, start each morning with those three questions. Health, purpose, relationships. Write down one small answer for each, one thing you'll actually do that day. It takes less than two minutes. It may feel awkward at first. But by the end of the week, I think you'll find it quietly pointing your attention at the things that actually matter the most to you.
Of the three, health, purpose, relationships, which one has been getting too little of your attention lately? Hit reply, I read every one.
I'll go first: health. I've been so heads-down building this that I've let my regular health routines go. Bad eating and not enough exercise. I took a long walk yesterday and it felt great. Today is another long walk. Tomorrow I’ll hit the gym. This is overdue. I’m excited!
Next week
We're doing something a little different: a true story. "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard, the astonishing account of Theodore Roosevelt's near-fatal journey down an uncharted Amazon river, after the lowest point of his life. It's about resilience, reinvention, and finding purpose in a second act. If you'd like to read along, this weekend's a good time to grab a copy, and the Kindle version is instant.
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I'll be back Monday,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building