Reminders of Resolve: A Quick Fix for Focus
How’s your focus been lately? Do things in your environment distract you from your work?
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The Isolator, a concentration helmet developed by Hugo Gernsback in 1925.
Though it takes a brutalist aesthetic to productivity hacking, it could be argued that it’s not too far off from the concentration tactics that we use today.
Strategies for designing an environment for focus generally fall under one of two categories:
- Removing distractions, like leaving your phone in a drawer somewhere or locking yourself away in a quiet room,
- And blocking out distractions, like listening to music or putting on soundproof headphones.
But perhaps my favourite strategy for designing concentration into our spaces is to add reminders of resolve.
Reminders of resolve are emotional triggers that tap into the heart of our pursuits.
Last week, I shared a discussion I found on Twitter. It asked people what physical reminders they have in their spaces to keep them centred on their goals and values — how they designed reminders of resolve into their spaces. Here are my favourites:
We’re all mind wanderers.
We have visions in our mind of the world we want to live in. And whether we have the resolve or not, we want to be the version of ourself who works toward being the best version of ourself.
Maybe it’s time to reconnect with your north star.
Bring that dream destination of yours into reality. Think about what creative compasses you can add to your space. Make it easy for yourself to remember what it feels like to yearn.
7 Tips to motivate your drive ⚡️
How to design an office that keeps you focused & energized.
Use reminders of resolve: physical reminders that keep you centred on your goals & values.
Reminders of Resolve: physical reminders we use to keep ourselves centred on our goals & values.
I dove into this great discussion of folks sharing the RoRs they use in their spaces.
And discovered 7 effective ways of aligning our passion pursuits into our environments:
Streaks are sticky and motivating to maintain.
Visual reminders of how far we’ve come help us hack the sunk cost fallacy to our benefit.
And seeing the progress we’ve made makes us want to keep pushing forward 💪
On the other side of tracking how far we've come is tracking how for we have to go.
We have a dream destination in our mind.
But there's nothing like actually seeing the finish line getting nearer to give us the push we need.
3. Solidified echoes
Sometimes we're lucky enough to find the perfect words to keep us motivated.
Our values, north stars, quotes, affirmations, mission...
Giving our eyes and ears easy access to them is a fan favourite for fuelling our 🔥
Whether it's:
- a person who inspires
- a character with traits worth emulating
- or the version of yourself you aspire to be
having a model of our role model in our space is a sure fire way to keep us on course.
Some of us thrive under time pressure.
And coming to terms with an impending countdown keeps us focused on not letting any of that time go to waste ⏳
No matter how vivid our mind's eye, our daydreams can't always compete with reality.
Translating our imagination into mini manifestations is a great way to solidify the goals we have for our future.
Working to benefit someone else sets our resolve into overdrive.
Whether it's:
- another person,
- a community,
- or even your future self,
having a visual reminder of them forces us to keep our eyes on the prize 🏆