How to quickly ruin (and fix) your life

Focus is giving yourself no options.

What you focus on creates what you become.

Let me tell you about this profound idea, so we both don’t have certain regrets lying on our death bed:

Most people will waste their lives focusing on the wrong things inside their head.

Thoughts about painful past mistakes we regret.

Thoughts about stressful future happenings that might happen.

Desires of hunger and short term pleasure to escape facing those thoughts.

A chaotic list of tasks that need to be finished, and open loops that come from any unfinished tasks.

I have experienced every one of those points in my 23 years of being alive.

I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was younger. I loved making short-films, Lego stop-motion movies, and writing terrible screenplays on my summer holidays (Christopher Nolan was my intellectual hero).

I never struggled with getting a dopaminergic rush of ideas. But they didn’t always feel nice.

I’ve always struggled with my mind. It feels like overthink everything and feel everything too deeply. I know I know, that seems to be the universal story that everybody tells about their own mind…

I shouldn’t say “mind.”

I should say what you focus on.

Attention, if it is left sitting idle, without a clear vessel for it to steer against the wind, will cause suffering deep within your unconscious mind.

For me, deep down, all of it WAS creative energy that was causing me to suffer. Which makes attention and focus even more paramount if you’re a creative person.

How can you unfuck your attention span?

How can you take full control of your mind?

How can you learn how to focus (once and for all) so you never have to read another “fix your focus/attention span/stop procrastinating” listicle ever again?

I have 3 ideas to share with you about why nobody can seem to solve the problem of attention and focus. We will think through them together.

And then I’ll propose an action plan (woohoo) for living a deeply intellectual life.

Idea 1 - What you focus on IS your life

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.

Marie-Louise von Franz

I don’t think there has ever been a larger generation of minds with their attention being so damn misdirected.

Listen.

You were not made to have your attention get torn in 1000 different directions within 5 minutes of waking up.

How can one control their attention, then? Is it even possible?

Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love - is the sum of what you focus on.

Everyone loves citing that line from Cal Newport in his book Deep Work. I’m a big fan of Cal, don’t get me wrong.

But do you know who Cal got that quote from? There are 3 important words that come before that line in his book:

As Gallagher summarizes: “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love - is the sum of what you focus on.”

Let me tell you about Winifred Gallagher.

When Gallagher got diagnosed with cancer, she made a conscious decision to not let the diagnosis direct her attention to any “what ifs,” and instead, she made an effort to focus on the good things in her life, in the present moment, because she knew the present moment was the only thing that was certain.

That idea helped her through her treatment. And it became the thesis behind her book Rapt.

Your life is the creation of what you focus on - and what you don’t.

Winifred Gallagher

Gallagher didn’t have absolute control over her circumstances, but she did have absolute control over what she attended to. Which changed her entire perspective on experiencing what it meant to be alive and human.

Back to the opening line of this essay...

What you focus on creates what you become.

But what is “attention?”

What does it mean? Like, on a deeper level than most people are willing to explore? Because we throw the word around left right and centre... while we’re still being bear-trapped by our phones?

Let me show you.

Idea 2 - The origin of the word “attention”

The word attention comes from the Latin word ad tendere.

Which means “to stretch toward.”

Anytime I personally think of the word attention, I think to physically attend to something. I attend to my writing routine every morning, my chores, my responsibilities.

One of the (many) definitions of the word attend, is “to be present.”

Attending implies being physically present, yes.

Paying attention implies making a transaction.

You pay attention, or you sacrifice your attention for one thing at the expense of attending something else.

See how this all starts making sense?

To focus is to hone in on something. Focus being a spectrum. Like the tip of an arrow head, when you are constricting your vision to one point (one dot on a wall, one tab open, one task, one present moment).

Or it can widen. In which you let your focus wander (often called creative thinking, where “shower thoughts” come from via the brain’s default mode network).

And “to stretch toward,” implies reaching for something you want.

What you focus on, attend to, stretch toward, and pay your limited attention for, at the expense of other things... is what determines everything in your life.

Who you are.

What you think.

What you feel.

And what goals you achieve.

There is also no difference between attention and love.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil

I like this idea. When you love somebody or something, you attend to it.

Attention, or focus, is the most profound form of generosity and rebellion. You rebel against what you don’t want to have happen in your life by focusing on the opposite things.

Think having a vision and an anti-vision.

A life you want to attain (7-9 hours of sleep daily, no screens after 10pm) and thus avoid (exhausted all day, splitting headaches when you wake up, can only write later in the day).

If you focus on things making you miserable, what will you see? Really think about that for a second…

What are you currently attending to and stretching toward with every second of your time across every day and week? You can quite literally find an answer to that question (it’s one of our action steps, actually!)

You need to protect your capacity for focused attention like your life depends on it.

It does.

So why can’t any of us actually do it, then?

Idea 3 - Depth is the new moat

Every writer and creator has written about focus and attention at some point.

I think the reason is simple.

We view attention and focus as a means to solve our productivity goals.

But what about identity?

Being super productive will solve all your productivity problems. Just like how having lots of money would solve all your money problems. But meaning, happiness, fulfilment, and enjoying your life with content in every present moment?

Different fucking story.

If you are so smart, why aren’t you happy?

The market (social media platforms) currently face two very modern problems:

1. People are consuming content without paying much attention to what they are consuming - They read or listen passively, not actively. They think they are thinking. And they numb their minds with doomscrolling short AND long form content... yes, you can doomscroll a long form post or video. Wake up.

2. The cost of creating content is practically zero - AI can write it, post it, and “optimize” it... which means the amount of content (or advertising, in better words) competing for people’s attention online is about to go vertical.

And if you’ve looked online at all recently, you can clearly tell that the people creating that slop content, aren’t giving much of their attention to the final product either...

How paradoxical.

People are getting sick of this.

Volume is no longer an advantage. If it were, posting 3 newsletters per week and 10 short form posts per day would mean you are winning. Which naturally means:

Depth is the new moat.

Depth of ideas, perspectives, synthesis and novelty. If everyone is doing volume, do depth. Do the opposite. If you understand market sophistication, you’ll know that people get sick of seeing the same things that used to “work.”

This is why I only post one long-form essay (newsletter) a week (and post short form when I feel like it) about what I’m learning and thinking about that week (philosophy, psychology, learning science, books I’m reading, and now writing).

In 15 months, that cultivated over 50k+ newsletter subs, and 75k+ total subs across two long-form platforms.

If I give myself a full week to write a newsletter, it means I can put more of my attention and thus thinking power toward it across DAYS.

Not 3 hours, hit send, and wonder why nobody reads the damn thing.

Your competitive edge as a creative person is the quality of attention behind the work.

Readers can feel it.

And attention, my friend, is quite literally a practice.

How to live a deeply intellectual life

Run an audit on your life

You could track everything you do across a week in a calendar to see where your focus is going, and what exactly you’re focusing on.

But I’d rather give you something you can do now this second.

Some of us don’t have all week.

Take out a page and write down everything you do. Or at least everything you think you do. Work, relationships, hobbies, morning and night time routines...

The purpose of this little audit is to see what’s filling your time (and therefore taking up your attention) and ruthlessly cutting everything that does not serve what you want from life. I’m not asking you for a perfect life plan here either. We all know certain things we’d love to start doing… and what things we could and should be doing to benefit us.

Here’s a short list as an example, for me:

• Writing content (newsletter, short form)

• Building digital products/paid newsletters

• Walking (idea generation) while listening to educational content, podcasts, lectures, articles etc.

• Lifting weights

• BJJ

• Meal prep

• Scrolling on Instagram…

Aha!

I didn’t like that last one on my list, so here’s what I did with it.

Turn your iPhone into a block of metal

I’m halfway through a 2 week experiment.

I activated grayscale mode on my phone. Which means it no longer has any colors on it (my phone is very uninteresting to look at and thus attend to now).

I deleted all social media apps off my phone. I can only access Substack, YouTube, and X on my computer.

I blocked any access to emails and turned off all notifications on my phone. Yes, all of them. Except for phone calls and WhatsApp for close friends and family. I use Opal to block Spotify, my email provider, and Audible, for when it’s time to work or enter the default mode network. Which is the brain’s network for feeling bored (great).

The reason I’ve done this… and I’ll be as honest as possible, as I always try to be, is this:

I want to be a writer.

My newsletter is growing by hundreds of email subs per day, and I’m building the version 2 of The Profound Writer, and I just made a plan for the next year’s worth of content for my paid newsletter. And I want to run a cohort at some point in the next 3-6 months teaching people how to write long-form like I do.

Doomscrolling on Instagram does not help me serve that goal. So I’ve removed it. I can scroll on my laptop if I want. I’m yet to do it.

Focus is the removal of options.

Which means I have a competitive edge over every other writer and creator not doing what I’m doing. Which is why I keep getting DMs asking me about why my idea quality is so high.

I do what I can to give myself as much thinking power as possible for thinking about what I write about.

And living life in a meaningful and deliberate way involves cutting out anything that doesn’t serve your goals.

Start creating!

Anything.

Software. An app. An essay. A newsletter. A body. A mind. A relationship. A routine.

How can you not be excited to wake up and avoid your phone all day when you have the chance to create something new?

I recommend writing.

Long-form, I mean. Essays, articles, newsletters… that’s my area of expertise. In particular, writing long-form about your genuine interests and deep ideas, but in a way that can capture and maintain attention, while also persuading people of the value of your interests and ideas in a clear way.

I recommend spending the first 30-90 minutes of your day building something new.

Most people won’t be awake, and there’s a type of self-care that comes with carving that time out of your morning, before work, even, to devote to yourself and moving the needle toward the life you want for yourself.

One needle, one day at a time.

Focus on one thing at a time

Every morning I write down my 2-3 highest priority tasks in my notebook.

My thinking being:

What is the highest ROI (return on investment) action I could do today?

In simple words, what tiny action would bring about the most results? Think the 80/20 rule, what 80% of outcomes come from 20% of your actions.

That becomes my first task of the day (for me, that’s building digital products/paid newsletters, because that’s how I earn a living doing this full time now).

Then, I build my day around single-focus time blocks.

What do I mean by this?

When it’s time to write, I write. When it’s time to do jiu-jitsu or hang out with my girlfriend or see the lads every Friday night, I don’t think about writing.

The purpose of a calendar is to allocate time for focusing on one thing. Every hour. You need something scheduled in.

Here’s what I did yesterday for example:

Ugly and grey, i know… that’s the fucking point. Coloring in your time blocks won’t help you write better ideas. If it did, i would do it!

I didn’t follow it down to the second. But I did try my best - I’m only human - to focus on just one thing per time block. That’s why we use a calendar, for designating focus.

Outwork everyone by being bored

Your best ideas come from being bored.

Boredom is the space that lets your brain make novel connections, so it can stir up the most profound ideas to write about. Which, is what you want. Depth is the moat, remember?

If you don’t want the same results that everybody else gets, don’t do what everybody else is doing.

That’s why I’ve turned my phone into a Nokia, pretty much, so I can write more, and with a better quality of ideas than everyone else pumping out slop. If you want social proof to show that this works, you know where to look.

For aspiring writers/creators looking to start writing online, here are some free templates and checklists you can check out that I currently use:

• My long-form writing checklist - So I don’t forget to include the objective/timeless principles that make my writing highly impactful

• My profound idea generation template - How I capture, organize, and generate deep ideas to write about each week before outlining

I’m halfway through the outline for the next version of The Profound Writer. If you want to build an audience and a meaningful body of work writing about your own interests and ideas like I do, I share my full writing/content system inside the course. Feel free to see if it’s for you by clicking here.

I’ll be working through my list of paid newsletter topics too. If you want to join the paid-tier before the price increases at some point in the next few weeks, you can do that today.

Apart from that, that is all for this week.

You are, as always, an absolute legend.

- Craig :)

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