When you think of focus, what comes to mind? Something functional, like a gymnast landing a vault? Or spiritual, a slow release of breath or a prayer? Is it calm? Or intense? Me? I think of the pine trees that grew behind the house I grew up in. This post is a meditation on focus, specifically the difficulty of doing it in our fragmented world, through those childhood days.

Then

I grew up on 3 acres surrounded by quickly urbanizing farmland. My family did not have a TV or internet (to be fair, few people had internet); my dad had a cell phone the size of brick; I was homeschooled. With few friends and a lot of time, I split it across a few activities:

Wandering around the pine forest on our land. Sometimes I'd simply lie down in a bed of pine needles to listen to the wind or see how sunlight changed as it filtered through the layers of tree canopy above. I've alwys hated pine scented products because they feel like such a poor imitation of that soft, clean smell of fresh pine needles.

Digging trenches. Our land had a weedy and never used lot, and I would spend hours just digging trenches. I imagined they were combat trenches or a spot for buried treasure. I don't know why this was so much fun but I'd spent entire days hacking away at the stubborn, clay filled soil.

Devouring books. My room had shelves and shelves of books, stacked in crates, falling innumerable brick-a-brack bookends, spilling out into the floor. I'd pick a book, read it, and then pick another. Sometimes i'd read multiple books in a single day. I had nothing better to do. Looking back, I don't think there was anything better I could have been doing.

I have read so many articles about trying to be present and achieve some Zen-like state of performance or concentration and I think those days were unconsciously filled with those rituals. I wasn't swarmed by a 24 hour news cycle; sucked in by a steady drip of social media feeds; or buried under a catch up list of shows, podcasts, and articles. I just had a forest, a hole-pocked field, and crates of books.

Now

My world is filled with feeds, todos, and pings. While those childhood days had downsides – primarily loneliness – I find myself longing for those periods of quietude and peace more often than regretting them.

Sadly, I find myself looking at my phone and reading an article while I'm watching a show that's only mildly interesting; listening to music while driving and trying to talk with my wife or kids. Hopping between Slack, and my code editor, and Figma, the latest A.I. assistant, and my browser. The more I pull down to refresh the feed of my life, the scattered and spent I feel.

I am slowly discovering that joy comes from less: from pairing away all the articles and lifehacking I've added into my life. When I put away my phone or my planner, I start to notice the shape of the clouds on a sunny day; I can laugh (or wince) at one of my kids corny jokes at dinner; I can hear my voice joining in a hymn with hundreds of other voices at my church. These are all a return to building those small, fundamental "core memory" moments.

Next

As I look forward, I am trying to figure out a way to re-claim more of that focus in my day-to-day life. This is tricky, because I am also a Software Engineer so pings are part of how I make my living. I also love technology too much to chuck it all away on a walden pond escape. But, I also understand how much being in the industry -- and relying on my computer and phone -- have a stake in capturing and monetizing our focus.

I'll share more about the strategies and mindset I'm trying to adopt in a subsequent post, but the tl;dr is that I am trying to slowly walk away from pursuing distraction, starting to limit it, and moving back to that simple, child-like, focus on the wonder of the world around me.