How to Get Focused

novel, you’re essentially telling the truth. You’re revealing a story as it comes to you, as the inspiration speaks to you. You then go back and redraft.

It’s different when writing a book that centers on communicating and convincing others of your thesis (like this book). As in my case, my thesis centers on the belief that the most successful people have a degree of focus that normal people rarely practice. In order to reach this thesis, I continually craft and map out how I’m going to communicate this point. My chapters are much different than it would be if I were writing a novel. My chapters center on essentially three parts: (i) I tell you what I’m going to tell you, (ii) I tell you through stories, data and steps, (iii) I tell you what I just told you.

You must have a strategy for writing the piece of art of your choice (whehter novel, memoir, poem or thesis-based book). If you’re writing a novel, your strategy should be freedom of thought in telling the story. If you’re writing a thesis-based book, your strategy should center on mapping out the direction of your book, and focusing on what your reader wants to know about the subject at hand. Once you understand your strategy, writing becomes easier.

4. Creating a writing environment You need to create an environment that drives you to focus, and enables you to write. Your environment should be quarantined of any major distractions. This includes cell phones, television or anything that may distract you.

In my Focus Lab, there’s basically two things: a light and a desk.

There’s no pictures, no furniture--nothing. The closest thing to art is the entire wall that I painted a deep red–it’s my belief that this color drives creativity, it drives action and it drives focus.

5. Effective ways to listen to music while writing Believe it or not, Stephen King rocks out to Metallica while writing.

We all have different music preferences for working. Some prefer listening to Pandora all day (www.pandora.com), whereas others prefer silence. When writing, if you do decide to listen to music, I