Hands up who’s ever picked up their phone to answer an email and then resurfaced an hour later only to realise you still need to answer that email.
There are plenty of articles, books and podcasts out there to tell you why you’ve lost your ability to focus.
Screens. Global news. Streaming services. Information served up to us non-stop every waking hour, in bite sizes. Modern life, basically. Plus, if you’re middle aged, menopausal or have kids (or all of the above) you can throw those into the mix too.
The result?
The attention span of a goldfish and a creeping worry that rather than becoming wiser with age, you're actually getting more stupid. How else can you interpret choosing to watch Below Deck (insert your particular lowbrow tv choice here) over making inroads into that tower of unread books you’ve been building?
So, the “focus” in our name is fairly straight forward.
To read non-fiction books you need to refind your focus. You need to push past the initial resistance when whatever you’re reading feels challenging and ignore the repeated little impulses to just pick up your phone instead.
If you’re reading the same sentence over and over and not taking in the meaning, you need to make a conscious effort to engage your brain and read actively. Skim reading doesn’t work when you want to transform what’s on the page into knowledge you can draw on in your life. It won’t stick unless you focus.
But what if we haven’t just lost our focus? What if we’ve also lost the art of aimless thinking?
Stuck in our busy little bubbles, we forget to make time to let our minds drift. To wander aimlessly through a landscape of ideas just for the joy of discovering new perspectives, taking our time to slowly form opinions and feel that first little spark of dawning interest.
That weekend paper feeling. Flicking through the pages, eyes drifting from headline to headline, occasionally alighting on something that catches your attention. Stopping to stare out of the window.
That’s why we produce our Drift + Focus magazine full of other recommended reads and snippets we think you’ll enjoy. It’s why we give our subscribers access to a curated page of playlists and podcasts and other digital content. And why we include the playful and pleasing little extras.
Because it’s when our minds are wandering that we make our most interesting connections. Those a-ha moments that appear in the corners of our vision.
When we consciously unfocus, that’s when our synapses start firing in unexpected ways.
So, that’s the story of our name. We drift. And then we focus.