focusing on "focus on what you want to see more of"

"I think about this often" - Part 2

Anya is focusing, when are you?

Visa is one of my favourite Twitter personalities almost since the time I joined the Bird app. This post is an exploration of one of his main talking points, "focus on what you want to see more of”. I highly recommend reading the original thread. I heavily borrow the tweets in this post from the same.

Succinctness

I like how this advice touches upon several ideas that help us navigate our lives more joyfully while being succinct. Every reading of the phrase prompts a series of instinctive and emotionally resonant questions.

“Focus” - How do you focus on something? I think the emphasis is more on managing your attention than “concentration”

“On what ” - Your attention is a valuable currency that you would like to spend carefully on things that preferably elevate the baseline quality of your life. Sometimes, you have these clear-as-crystal goals, like a lighthouse guiding your ship. But then there are times when your intentions are more like puffy clouds of thought. A bit hazy, kind of vague, but still there. So what attention seeds do you want to grow and cultivate in your life’s garden?

”You want” - What do you want? How to gain clarity if you are unsure? These are signals to develop taste and sharpen one’s judgement.

“To see more of” - How can you see more of things you want to experience more of?

I try to uncover all the above questions in this post.

Why would you even like to see more of something?

Notice the arrow is backwards. “Cupid is so dumb”

The answer's simple, really - to maximize enjoyment and meaning.

I recently loved this song Cupid. I liked the beat and the angelic vocals (and it somewhat reflects my situation too lol). Since then, I have been on the lookout for songs that radiate a similar vibe.

So, why would I want to experience more of something? Because it brings me joy. I savor it. I found something beautiful in it. It stirs up emotions within me. Maybe it's challenging to consume or create, but there's something very rewarding about the process. As Visa puts it, we should "seek out beautiful and sacred things."

Look straight

Before answering the questions, I will show you one interesting application of the advice - redirection by reframing your intention.

Have you ever found yourself, spending way too much time tweeting and talking to people in the Twitter-verse? We have all got these habits we would like to curb and often resort to setting goals such as, "I won't log onto Twitter today," or "I'll spend no more than two hours on YouTube." While these goal statements are well-intentioned, I believe their linguistic structure diminishes their effectiveness.

They place attention on what we wish to avoid, embedding the undesired behavior within the goal itself. This unintentional emphasis can trigger the 'Pink Elephant' effect, which means in an attempt to suppress certain thoughts and actions, we make them more prominent in our mind.

To tackle this, I often reframe my intentions using the advice. Instead of “I will not spend more than 2 hours on Youtube”, I ask myself “what are other things that I would like to spend my time on that I enjoy or are higher priority” and then I pursue them. “I will focus on writing for 2 hours today.”

By consciously shifting my focus this way, I am naturally able to reduce time on undesired behavior. So instead of “I don’t want do y” intentions, figure out what you would prefer doing more and redirect yourself by setting “I want to do x” intentions. x can be some goal. A more likely x would be something that you like. “do things that you like to do”.

This brings us to the next aspect I like. The “what you want” part touches upon the idea of taste cultivation and understanding yourself (your likes, dislikes)

Figuring out “what you want”

The “what” can be an emotion you want to experience again or could be a goal you want to achieve. It could also be a behaviour change, learning a new skill, or being able to improve your relationship with someone.

In our roles as employees or students, our goals mostly come pre-packaged. There’s not much figuring out required. It’s pure execution. But when it comes to personal interests, things aren't as clear-cut. Our environment constantly nudges us towards new things like over-eager salesmen and twitter hypebois. But to figure out what we truly fancy, that's where taste cultivation and vibe-filtering come in.

note down what you like and analyze

Take some time out to jot down the nudges and wants that pop-up in your thought space in day-to-day life. Note down why they caught your attention. If you want to encourage them, you can try tweaking your surroundings to adjust the intensity of flavour.

If a particular thought keeps coming back for an encore, it’s probably worth giving it a shot. Don’t hold back. Be greedy and act out based on vibe levels. (Btw, I have talked about this here before). Don’t forget to reflect on what you liked and didn’t like. Exposure is essential to taste cultivation.

"I think about this often" - Part 1

taste cultivation

Cultivating taste is an introspective journey that can clarify what you truly want.

The act of cultivating taste is like a pilgrimage into the deep recesses of one’s self. It's a quiet voyage of discovery, one where you sift through layers of fleeting desires until you touch upon something raw and authentic, something that resonates on a visceral level. This journey, while requiring patience and introspection, has a way of refining your compass of wants, crystallizing your true longings in its wake.

Cultivating taste is not about liking 'the right things', but rather about developing a deeper understanding and appreciation of what you personally like, enjoy, and value. What you like is often what you want (barring degenerate activities). Things you genuinely want are much easier to focus on and more enjoyable. It's almost like a 1000 IQ move.

But how do you cultivate taste? You can perhaps make a list of what you like and dislike. Your strengths and weakness. What you enjoy and don’t enjoy. What kind of music you like. As Visa says, “Make a list of 100 things you like.” Describe why you like them (stuff you would like to see more of) What aspects you don’t like? Do the things you like to do and reflect. Notice what caught your attention.

Spend time with people you love. Describe why you love them. Sometimes, what you admire in 'people you admire' is probably what you wish to cultivate for yourself. Another popular opinion I have heard is “Crushes are misplaced ambition”.

Dive deeper into the things you like. Educate yourself. Get to know it, understand it, and have a conversation with it. What's the deal with why you like it so much? Break down the vibes. Connect with similarly crazy people and have a chat with them. There’s nothing like vibing over two shared brain cells.

Youtube comments are abundant with comments about what people liked. My favourite set of comments is the “I love how” ones on Youtube where people describe what they liked about the video or song. I also love tweets of the same nature.

@startingfromnix

Tweets from @startingfromnix and Youtube comment below the song Wait a Minute by Willow Smith.

The “focus on” and “see more of”

Now that you have a list of things that you like and activities you enjoy, use them haha.
If you have done the “figuring out what you want” part well, then focusing should not be an issue.

To improve your focus, meditation, sleeping well enough, exercising, and immersion (via resources or people ) into the activity are your best bets. Although, we need to go one level below to the attention layer.

Plan to do things you like or need to do, like really schedule some stuff. I have noticed that I guard my free time more than my working time lol. Keep returning to them and maintain a log to reflect. Talk about what you do.

Repeating point but find people who are interested in the same online (e.g via Twitter) or offline (friends, networking events). Curate aggressively and revamp occasionally.

how does one get good at “focussing part”

“You might as well joke about the outcomes you do want” is a nice way to add attention hooks. It might sound woo woo but I like the focus on the directional emphasis.

You might have noticed that the “see more of” and “focus on” are intertwined. The more you “focus on” something, the more you learn about the activity and deepen your understanding of what you like/don’t like. The more you understand what you like, the better you know what you want and don’t want. In this process, you understand yourself deeper because now you know what you enjoy or benefit largely from. I am surprised by this recursive nature of the advice.

Visa says, “consecrate your attention for delight”. Now that you have things to come return to, to enjoy or for recreation in hard times, schedule. These things will replenish your soul.

Sometimes in order to figure out the what, you can curate your environment to encourage yourself by more mimesis or simply more exposure.

Finally, it’s important to let go of preconceived notions so that you can make room for new possibilities and truly focus on what you want, where you are not bound by your past experiences and notions of ‘how things you should be’. This will perhaps help us to shape our future more consciously.

And that's a wrap! If you've hung in with me till this point, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back - this wasn't exactly a light read. Thanks for reading. Next small section is a couple of songs I liked in the past few days.

Thanks for reading!

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Songs I liked in the past few days

Cupid is my favourite song these days. The korean english, the beat and the lyrics are all on point. There are several good covers too for this song. There’s a nice rap portion in the Korean version.

My interpretation: Cupid is the god of desire and erotic love. The myth is whoever he shoots with his arrow will immediately fall in love with someone. The girls are finding trouble finding love so they are blaming Cupid and calling him stupid (because the arrow didn’t land lol)

Another recent favourite: “Forget” by Pogo. It’s a compilation of Disney voices to make up a song. Very catchy.