Yesterday morning was a very focused, productive day. I established the daily foundation of writing and jogging. I also met up with a couple local entrepreneurs that are doing some great things, and will hopefully help boost the Southern California Startup brand.

Here’s the thing, though: I didn’t get enough sleep. I got about five hours of sleep. In the past, I once attempted an experiment of sleeping only five hours; however, that lasted about a week. I ended up crashing on a Saturday night and ended up sleeping from 8pm to 12pm the next day. Not very productive. I’ve found that I need about seven to eight hours of sleep to be at my best. My wife needs eight to nine hours.

Anyways, this lack of sleep didn’t really hit me until around 11am. Combined with this, I had a banging headache. And no, it wasn’t a hangover. My theory is this headache and groggy feeling also came from the fact that I had quite a sizeable dinner yesterday.

My thesis for when writing the chapter on the concept of “sleep” and its effects on focus will center on experimenting with different sleep cycles and meal times.

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve begun the Getting Focused project, and already I’ve experienced tremendous results in the areas of concentration and long-term focus. For nearly a week I’ve stuck to a routine of getting to bed earlier, waking up earlier, and writing. Essentially, I get to work before I get to work.

The biggest difference I feel can be experienced on Thursday nights. Usually on Thursday nights, I was burnt at both ends. Likely, I had not experienced adequate sleep from the previous nights; after establishing a focused foundation, this feeling was extinguished.

This week, my focus foundation centered on the following routine:

Before work, I would write. After work, I would read (I wouldn’t write–that was a rule. Writing is only for mornings).

I feel this gave me a calmer, sharper outlook on problems that needed to be solved throughout the work day. Essentially, it hedged out the emotion one usually carries into work, and instead drove me to think deeper (and logically) about issues that arose.

Looking forward to continuing this project and write about the art of focus every day.

Today I accomplished all activities set out in my daily foundation: reading, exercise, walk dog, focus food (coffee) and reviewed notecards.

The effect resulted in a day where I wasn’t overtly talkative. I expected a skip in my step. I expected to feel more enthusiastic. I didn’t. I felt what I didn’t expect to feel: focused.

It’s Tuesday night. Almost mid-week. The work week is beginning to get busy. I’m beginning to feel as if there aren’t enough minutes in the day. As soon as I’m making progress on the to-do list, I get side-swiped with something else that’s often not as critical as the task at hand. My plan is to begin closing the office door when I’m working on critical tasks.

Today I arose refreshed and ready for the work-week. I believe the feeling stemmed from two events: (i) I went to bed early, (ii) and I exercised yesterday.

Unfortunately, I didn’t exercise today; however, I’m optimistic because I’m starting to associate exercise with pleasure. After researching and writing about exercise (a chapter that I released yesterday), I’m beginning to buy into the positive effects exercise has on the brain.

Today I’ll be fleshing out my organization system, as well as my contact management system. I’ve been reading up recently about leading business people, politicians and celebrities. They all know a lot of people. The best ones have a focused system for getting to know people. Being that life centers around people, it’s my goal to improve my system in meeting more people. I’ll be applying focused habits to not only networking, but also getting to actually know people.

Bill Clinton. Love him or hate him, he’s known for one thing: he’s a charmer. The people he comes across are typically awed by how he remembers personal details about their lives. I remember a person I worked with telling me a story of how he met Bill briefly at a charity function. Two years later he ran into him again and Bill remembered not only his name, but their entire conversation. My colleague recalled, “He picked up the conversation as if a half-hour had passed between the meeting.” I’ll be experimenting with basic notecards as a contact management system, as well as some online contact management solutions.

There’s another tale of young Bill Clinton, where he was at a social gathering, and while talking to an individual, he pulled out a notecard and started writing down bits of their conversation. The person Bill was speaking with asked him what he was doing, and Bill told him, “I’m taking notes about you and our conversation.”

At one point in my life I jogged immediately after waking up everyday. I did this for four years straight. A little over a year ago, this stopped completely. I took one day off. Then two days off. Then a week off. Then a month off. Now, I’ve taken a year off of regular exercise. Of course, I’ve worked out and jogged in this past year, but not habitually. I’ve also tried to get back in this habit, but lost focus.

So here I am again. It’s Day 4, and I have still yet to jog first thing in the morning. I’m beginning to believe that the reason I’ve yet to jog is not because it takes too much time, or because I get to bed late; rather it’s something deeper:

My association with jogging’s effects are weak. The positive association I have with jogging barely exists. Put simply, I don’t have a reason why I should jog in the morning. I’m not convinced as to why I should jog before work, or even in general. My reasoning right now is that, compared to jogging, eating healthy food has significantly more impact on what shape you’re in than does jogging.

It’s “the why” that’s the issue. I believe that positive thinking is fine and dandy, but it’s the associations of pain and pleasure (credit to Robbins) that actually make someone want to do something. I’m going to need to associate jogging with being pleasurable.

In order to do gain a better association, I’m going to follow these three action steps:

1. Research jogging’s implications and effect on focus
2. Observe my results after jogging/exercising
3. Most importantly, I’ll be answering the question in writing, “Why is jogging first-thing in the morning important to you?”

Today’s small battle victory came in the form of waking up early, jumping straight into the Focus Foundation and also making some huge progress on the outline of the book/blog. The downside: I still have yet to exercise before work.

Focus Foods and Sleep:

A challenge to work on and write about: When I arise in the morning, I’m clogged up and extremely groggy. My nose is stuffed, my eyes feel like they’re burning. It’s nothing big; it’s just not pleasant. I have a theory that this is food habit-related. Dairy products, coffee combined with eating at night probably isn’t the best for sleep. As a part of the blog/book, I’ll be experimenting with different focus foods, products and sleep habits that counter-act the early-rising headache.

Additionally, on the drive to work earlier today, I thought of a model that outlines the path to success. There are thousands of books out there that dissect elements involved in leading to success: (i.e. habit formation, setting goals, you are what you think about, getting motivated, getting organized, finding your purpose, etc.) These are all critical elements to success, and I’ll recommend a variety of books that covers these elements, as they’ve completely transformed my life.

Here’s the thing(s): There are two things that run in the background of  all these elements: (i) Hard Work, and (ii) Focus. In this blog/book, I’ll discuss how you can become a more focused person. I’ll also be touching on many of the specific elements that are critical to reach success; however, the focus will be on focus.

Without further ado, here’s the model:

The Model For Success

Today I set out to accomplish the same 6 items outlined yesterday: Jog, Read, Review Notecards, Write and Walk The Dog.

Yesterday I went 1 for 6 (~16%). Today I went 3 for 6 (50%): Read, Review Notecards and Walk The Dog

By no-means did I go to sleep early, but I definitely fell asleep earlier than the previous night. Instead of looking at this 50% fail rate; I’m looking at it as a small battle victory. Arriving at the Small Victory mindset is critical to success. Still, don’t sugar coat anything. A fail is a fail, and if this was a question of “did you succeed or fail in meeting all six goals?” the answer is clearly failure. However, life isn’t a quiz. Life isn’t broken up into semesters and summer breaks. Life isn’t always about absolutes.

If you look at improvement as small victories, it helps you move towards the bigger victory (in this case, consistently accomplishing all six goals).

In 37 Signal’s book, “Getting Real,” they dedicate an entire chapter to small victories. He uses Small Victories in project management for software companies:

When you find those 4-hour quick wins, you’ll find celebration. That builds morale, increases motivation, and reaffirms that the team is headed in the right direction.

As a result of reading and reviewing Notecards, my work day was significantly better than yesterday. I accomplished a significant amount of tasks–both planned tasks and unplanned tasks. As well as tasks that have been tabled for too long. I feel reading and reviewing the notecards has given me the focus needed to make this happen.

The essence of accomplishing these six tasks lays the foundation for living a focus-driven life. I’m not sure what to coin this “hour of power,” as Tony Robbins would put it, but I’ll think of something clever.

Next Step: At this point I’m still busy organizing the sections/parts/chapters of How To Get Focused.

Today’s the first day of the Focus Experiment. It may be a little tougher than I thought.

Today I planned on accomplishing the following before heading off to work. It’s a concept about doing what you should/want to do before the day starts–before heading to class, work or whatever.

Jog, Read, Review Notecards, Write, Walk Dog

Guess how many I accomplished? One. I walked my dog.

Reason: I couldn’t sleep last night. My mind was moving. I couldn’t stop thinking about this experiment, “How To Get Focused,” which I coded and built yesterday (Sunday, January 3, 2009). I ended up going to bed at 2am, which may be a carry over from staying up so late for New Years.

Key: I see this as a good thing. Challenge is why we’re here. It’s why I’m writing this. Getting focused is hard. It begins before the day begins. This means I’ll likely be writing about sleeping patterns, and how to get your mind prepared to sleep in the future.

Next up: Tonight, after work, I plan on mapping out the overview and contents of this living book–note, this is not a blog .

Result: The result of not following this habit didn’t necessarily have a negative impact on the day. I just didn’t achieve all that I’m capable of achieving. Tomorrow I’ll share the results of following these habits.