Focus is a funny thing- you can force someone to focus by telling them not to with the classic, “Don’t think about pink elephants,” line. But focus is also like a muscle- you can strengthen it over time if you’re willing to put in the work. If you are trying to get more muscle definition, you can sit in the gym for hours day after day and move iron plates around OR you can enroll in a program or hire a personal trainer who can target the gains you want to make in specific areas. The same is true for focus- you can read about it online, watch others, and hope to improve over time OR you can seek out an expert in cognition or psychology and target specific gains.
The final option for improving focus is to ask your 5-year-old what it means to focus after they shush you and tell you “I’m just getting focused.” I was so intrigued, that I ironically interrupted his focus to ask him about focus. “How do you do that? What do you do to get focused?” I asked. After about a full fifteen seconds of silence and making ‘thinking faces’, he responded. “I think of the direction I want to go.”
Does it get any better than that?