How my 2-year-old son taught me to focus

I didn’t expect that having a toddler would improve my focus. After all, aren’t they supposed to be chaos embodied, a frenzy of activity, spraying attention in all directions? And certainly they take time and energy to raise, teach, and protect.

Yet toddlers also haven’t yet learned the [cognitive mistake](http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking) of trying to juggle more than one thing at once. Sure, my son plays with 20 different toys in 20 minutes. But he does so one at a time, first playing with a train, then putting it down and playing with a car, then putting that down to play with a different train. For him, attention moves smoothly between objects, without attachment and with total focus each time. While he is playing with a train, he has no thoughts or plans about the car right next to it. When he picks up the car, all thoughts of the train disappear.

He expects this of others, as well. My wife and I have been intentional about how we use technology around him, but sometimes the infinite abyss of a smartphone tempts me away for just a moment. My son has no tolerance for this split attention, and quickly corrects me: “Dada, will you put that down! Come sit right here!”

I’ve been working through the Focus series in my [daily meditation](https://www.headspace.com/) this month. One of the key concepts introduced is that focus is not a static experience, but a dynamic one; moving from object to object, sensation to sensation. What matters most is not absolute sterility, but a robust and flexible flow that can adapt to changing circumstances.

What my 2-year-old son taught me about focus is that while the object of your focus might change, the quality and intensity shouldn’t. It is possible to focus completely on one thing at a time, and be completely present in each moment. It’s so easy, in fact, that a toddler can do it. What’s my excuse?

Questions That Lead to Love

An interesting article has made the rounds recently, detailing the story of a couple who fell in love through answering a set of questions to each other.

[The list of questions is now online](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html) and ranges from polite dinner conversation:

> Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

To deeply personal:

> What is your most terrible memory?

And truly existential:

> If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

Seems like a worthy, though intense, exercise!

Training the mind and body

I’ve been a regular cyclist for 25 years. For the first decade, I was serious, riding every day and following schedules from books and coaches. But if I’m honest, my approach was always based more on “trying” than “training”–I would often skip days, then put out an extreme effort when I did ride to make up for my inconsistency. In the end, this meant I had less fitness than I could have, and races and training involved more pain than they needed to.

Since my son was born, the limits on my time have forced me to focus my riding. I now do [most of my rides](http://www.strava.com/athletes/1307) before dawn on the indoor trainer, and each ride has some structure to it, often [interval training](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_training). Because of the consistency and efficiency of the indoor rides, I can get up to 5 1-hour workouts per week, and finish before he wakes up in the morning.

A typical interval session sees me spinning slowly at first, then shifting gears to increase the effort for a period of time before going back to spinning. This process repeats up to 30 times per workout. It feels mechanical at times; that I’m treating my body like [an IKEA chair durability test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WicEZwRo-WU). But it’s had a remarkable effect: in just a few hours a week, I’m now close to the fitness I had 15-20 years ago, when I had much more time to ride. And these efforts feel a lot easier than the workouts I did then.

Recently I also started using the [Headspace](https://www.headspace.com/) service to practice mindfulness and guided meditation. It struck me today how similar the process is to my cycling training. The Headspace approach is based on short (10-minute) daily sessions. I do them before I ride in the morning–which means getting up just a little bit earlier, but gives more consistency than trying to fit it in later. A typical session spends a little bit of time relaxing and getting settled, then focuses on one or two physical sensations: sound, body tension, breathing, etc.

The part most similar to my cycling is near the end of each session, where the guide encourages you to let the mind go, to let it wander and think about whatever it likes. Since this comes after several minutes of focus, it feels like a rest, giving the mind a chance to catch up to the effort. But every time, after a minute of rest, the guide tells you to refocus, to pull the mind back to center and let go of the thoughts it had wandered to. This feels to me almost exactly like the point in a cycling workout where I shift up and start a new interval effort. The mindful focus is the effort, the wandering the rest interval.

You can’t expect to always be focused, just as you can’t expect to always push at the highest level on a bike. Both processes involve effort and rest. And also like cycling, you can’t make up for an inconsistent mental life by “trying” even harder. The mind requires regular training, just like the body, and the right type of training makes everything easier and more effective.

In a recent Sunset magazine article, a writer spent a day just like a Hollywood celebrity. It involved workouts, special meals, and a busy social schedule. He came away with the feeling that the celebrity life was more like athletic training than hedonistic indulgence. As a celebrity, your image is your livelihood, and it requires regular effort to maintain.

Training isn’t something just for athletes–it’s a process for the mind and the lifestyle as well. It’s been interesting to see how similar techniques can benefit each of those.

My other baby

…had its birth announcement today:

Glad to finally share more information about our design!

Baby contraptions

La ci darem la mano – jazz style!

An [amazing version](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/syndicate.php?name=phc/2012/11/10/phc_20121110_128&starttime=00:34:44.0&endtime=00:37:25.0) of the most influential song in my life:

The Muppets also did it pretty well!

Character first

I’ve thought about [this sermon](http://vimeo.com/50045277) a lot over the past month. During stressful times it’s good to remember that the real goal is not success in work or even personal life, but rather building character to be more loving, more honest, more holy. Not your circumstances but how you grow in them to those ends.

> When we see a brand new baby, part of what we love about that baby is that little baby when it first arrives in this world is just innocent. How long does that baby’s innocence last? Twenty years? Twenty minutes? Innocence is the absence of sin, but it’s not yet the presence of character. Character is that pattern, those habitual patterns of…How do I think? What do I want? What will I choose?…That’s what life is about. – [John Ortberg](http://vimeo.com/50045277)

Getting on rocket ships

> When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on. – [Sheryl Sandberg](http://www.businessinsider.com/sheryl-sandbergs-full-hbs-speech-get-on-a-rocketship-whenever-you-get-the-chance-2012-5)

Done.

Got them both!

> “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein

Tour de Suisse tackles the P2HR

My “[Perfect 2-Hour Ride](http://app.strava.com/activities/2208066)” in Zürich looped around the Pfannenstiel, a climb that the Tour de Suisse went over in today’s time trial. I watched it online and it was cool to see professionals on the same roads I rode not long ago!

Kreuziger descends from the Pfannenstiel:

Kreuziger at the point [I took some photos last fall](http://www.swisskamps.com/2011/10/escaping-fog.html):

Kreuziger climbing Pfannenstiel:

Fränk Schleck descends toward the Zürichsee:

Schleck climbs:

Valverde climbs; I never had this many cheering fans along the road, I’m afraid:

John Gadret at the peak, where I’d go straight but the tour went left.