JULY 2025What’s worth your concentration?
Hi there, how was your weekend?
I'm finding it impossible not to think about concentration as we plunge into summer. For myself and many I coach, summer isn't generally a season associated with deep work and mental stamina.
It also feels vital to include an asterisk here: you're not alone if concentration feels eons away after any brief brush with the news cycle. My hope is that this edition helps you turn a bit closer to the beauty and meaning in your day to day.
Concentration is an exploration of how we get things done. Sometimes the answer is that we don't. We intentionally lighten our loads, or nominate areas of our life in which we won't expect excellence. Other times, it's worth it to keep going. So, even when distractions pile up or we only have small windows of time for focused work, we commit our concentration to the effort at hand.
The idea of finitude helps tremendously. (No doubt Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks shifted how so many of us think about productivity). When we embrace the inherent limits of time and capacity, we illuminate our real priorities. It's a gut-wrenching forcing function that, while painful, is also hugely liberating.
Concentration, then, becomes less about perfect conditions and clearing the decks, and more about deliberately directing energy toward what matters.
As I've been thinking on the topic of concentration, I've found it helpful to tease apart related cognitive skills, often used interchangeably: attention (noticing the smell of coffee brewing), focus (choosing to listen to one conversation in a noisy room), and concentration (staying with a challenging task despite distractions).
To be deliberate about what matters, and stay with it, is deeply fulfilling.
Have a great week,
Mallory
P.S. Could you stare at the same painting for 3 hours?
