On Monday, Cal Newport and I are reopening Lifetime of Focus for a brand new session. Earlier than we do this, I’d prefer to take this opportunity to elucidate how Lifetime of Focus works—since it’s a little completely different from what most individuals have come to anticipate from on-line programs—and share how I take into consideration designing programs to encourage habits change.
The traditional course is all about offering info. There’s a syllabus with a listing of content material; a bunch of lectures the place the concepts, information and ideas are conveyed; and at last, there’s an examination to check in the event you bear in mind every little thing you had been taught.
There’s nothing mistaken with this mannequin for a lot of topics. In lots of fields, info is what’s lacking, so taking a while to be taught is the perfect motion.
Nonetheless, from practically 20 years creating on-line programs, I’ve usually been upset with how the traditional strategy to structuring a course interprets to motion. The issue is that numerous info, by itself, not often interprets to concrete behavioral change. A course on vitamin, as an illustration, provides you with tons of helpful ideas and concepts about consuming higher—however it could not truly change the way you eat, which is the final word purpose of most individuals.
When Cal Newport and I began designing Lifetime of Focus, we knew this was going to be a possible subject in our course. Cal had just lately printed Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. Most of our potential college students had both learn these books or adopted Cal’s weblog or podcast and had been already accustomed to his requires rising focus in work and life.
We knew that folks attending the course didn’t want extra exhortations to show off their electronic mail when doing deep work or classes concerning the neuroscience of attentional processing. As an alternative, we designed the course to information them by way of particular steps to create new working behaviors, and to have follow-through so these behaviors may grow to be lifelong habits.
The Format of an Motion-Centered Course
On account of this, Lifetime of Focus (and my more moderen course, Foundations) follows a special mannequin than what we usually consider as a course.
To start out, the course is organized into three month-to-month challenges. Relatively than placing the teachings first with the homework as an elective bonus (let’s face it, most individuals who take on-line programs not often do the assignments), we put taking motion to enhance our focus first, after which present common classes to remind and reinforce these actions as they’re already underway.
The three challenges for Lifetime of Focus are:
- Monitoring your deep work hours
- Conducting a digital declutter, and
- Partaking in a focus-building mission to make or be taught one thing new.
As one other inversion to the standard course format, we begin every month with a guided worksheet. This helps college students provide you with step-by-step actions they’ll take to start every month-long problem with the perfect footing. Solely as soon as college students begin engaged on the problem can we begin offering classes to fine-tune, remind, inspire and redirect college students as they undergo the month.
On high of this, we add numerous direct neighborhood help and training so college students can rapidly deal with sticking factors as they arrive up, earlier than they fall off the problem or get discouraged.
Briefly, the format of Lifetime of Focus is extra like a private coach on the health club than a college class on train science. By encouraging motion from the get-go, the teachings and suggestions help behavioral modifications as you’re making them.
Whereas Cal and I had been uncertain how such a novel course format would work with college students, we’ve got been pleasantly shocked, and plenty of college students have informed us Lifetime of Focus is their favourite course they’ve taken with us. Many college students have even taken the course a number of occasions since they first enrolled, treating second and third passes as an opportunity to additional refine their course of utilizing the three-month construction it supplies.
Lifetime of Focus Opens Monday
I needed to elucidate this course format as a result of, in working this course and others over the previous couple of years, I’ve forgotten how completely different this strategy may be for many individuals. It may be exhausting to elucidate why becoming a member of a structured three-month program to enhance focus is completely different than merely studying a e-book or listening to podcasts. However our deal with taking motion first, after which supporting that motion with studying, is designed to assist our college students make actual modifications—not simply take into consideration making them.
I hope you’ll be part of us on Monday so you’ll be able to see it for your self!
