100 Push-Up Challenge

When I produced the latest version of SuperFocus, I used “Read War and Peace” as an example of how the method could keep one going during a project which required consistent effort over a period.

I thought I’d better do something similar for “Dreams” so I’ve decided on something a lot harder. I’ve decided to go for the 100 Push-Ups Challenge. You will see from the previous post that I have put it in my Future Reality.

At the age of 67 I don’t expect to go from my current ability to do six push-ups to being able to do one hundred in only six weeks. I will almost certainly take a lot longer and may never get there. But the important thing is to keep going and give it the best try I can.

I’ll give regular reports so you can see how effective Dreams is in keeping the vision going!

Update on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 13:18 by Mark Forster

Week 1 Day 1 (repeated for 2nd time)

Set 1: 6 of 6
Set 2: 6 of 6
Set 3: 4 of 4
Set 4: 4 of 4
Set 5: 6 of 5+

First time I’ve been able to do more than the minimum in the last set. But I expected to be able to do a lot more. It is indeed a case of two steps forward, one step back.

Week 1 Day 3 (repeated)

Set 1: 8 of 8
Set 2: 10 of 10
Set 3: 3 of 7
Set 4: 2 of 7
Set 5: 1 of 10+

Failed again, but a marked improvement over last week, when I failed in Set 2. And, as Marcelo says, I’m now a double-digit pushupper!

Week 1 Day 2 (repeated)

Set 1: 6 of 6
Set 2: 8 of 8
Set 3: 6 of 6
Set 4: 6 of 6
Set 5: 7 of 7+

Fantastic improvement!

Week 1 Day 1 (repeated)

Set 1: 6 of 6
Set 2: 6 of 6
Set 3: 4 of 4
Set 4: 4 of 4
Set 5: 5 of 5+

Disappointing that I was no better than on my first try. However I know very well that it’s often a case of two steps forward, one step back, so the real test will be later this week.

Week 1 Day 3

Set 1: 8 of 8
Set 2: 6 of 10
Set 3: 2 of 7
Set 4: 2 of 7
Set 5: 1 of 10+

Same number of pushups in total as Day 2 but leading with 8 instead of 6. I’m pretty sure that if the set of 10 had been first I could have done at least 9. Next week I will repeat Week 1. (Note: I e-mailed Steve Speirs, the author of the program, to ask if it was best to repeat Day 2 or have a go at Day 3 and he replied to have a go at Day 3).

Week 1 Day 2

Set 1: 6 of 6
Set 2: 8 of 8
Set 3: 4 of 6
Set 4: 1 of 6
Set 5: Not attempted

Day 2 to be repeated, but note that I can now do 8 pushups.

Week 1 Day 1

Set 1: 6 of 6
Set 2: 6 of 6
Set 3: 4 of 4
Set 4: 4 of 4
Set 5: 5 of 5+

Future Reality

How to Make Your Dreams Come True suggests that once the vision has “taken” it’s sufficient to revise the Present and Future Realities once a week.

Different people will probably come up with different ways of doing this, but at the moment I am finding that it is very powerful to re-type and revise my Future Reality first thing every morning, and to re-type and revise my Present Reality every evening. This seems to provide the impetus to work towards the vision throughout the day. In fact this impetus is strong enough for me to no longer feel the need to ask the question “Is this what I want to be doing?”

My initial version of my Future Reality was written on 27 May. Since then it has expanded, contracted to one sentence and expanded again. Here are the two versions for comparison:

27 May

I am living a very well-ordered life in which the principles of “How To Make Your Dreams Come True” are put fully into practice. I love creating and everything I set my hands to comes to fruition effortlessly. I am extremely healthy and fit. I have a close circle of friends. All this makes me feel alive, full of energy and peaceful.

12 June

I am living a powerful, well-ordered and creative life in which everything gets done when it needs to be done. I’m supported in my work by a tidy and efficient office. The Dreams Manual has been a great success and I am teaching its principles through seminars, teleconferences and the internet, while living entirely by those principles myself. I am extremely fit and full of energy and enjoy long-distance walking, yoga and physical challenges (including passing the 100 push-ups challenge). I run a highly successful blog for ……. and this has resulted in a lot of new members. I speak and read French with fluency. I naturally attract people who share my enthusiasm for living and this is resulting in some amazing friendships. I love the sense of freedom and achievement that all this gives me.

Once I’ve written today’s Present Reality this evening, I’ll post a similar comparison.

Deletion of Unused Discussion Forum Accounts

The Discussion Forum is now approaching the limit of 250 Members Accounts which Squarespace allows without my having to pay a whole lot extra.

There are a number of accounts which have been set up but never used. I propose to delete these early next week. The accounts at risk of deletion are:

AndrewW

Balfour

Bobbullets

Djorn

Firstday

Geoff C

Kase

Larry G

leeyho

Marshall

ms

Owen

Peter Kraan

Phelim

Rebecca

smeatho

Stan

Vivavita

If you want to avoid your account being deleted all you have to do is log in. You do not have to make a post. Once your account has been deleted you can re-instate it at any time by emailing me with the details.

After I have taken up the extra places freed by deleting these accounts, I will make room for new accounts by deleting existing accounts in reverse order of when they were last logged-in.

"Dreams" Set-Up With Evernote

 

Click on the picture for full-size version.

I’m finding that Evernote makes an excellent platform for working on “Dreams”. You can have your Future and Present Reality, your Dialogue and your What’s Better list all open on your computer desktop at the same time and can keep them there all day if necessary.

Staying in Pull Mode

For those who set out on the “Dreams” path of Pull Mode (to be pulled towards one’s vision) the biggest difficulty is to keep from falling into Drift Mode.

The difficulty is so great because Pull Mode and Drift Mode appear superficially similar. In both we do what we feel like doing. The difference is that in Pull Mode our feelings are leading us towards our vision. while in Drift Mode our feelings are leading us nowhere in particular.

It’s therefore very important to be able to tell when one is in Drift Mode and to know how to get back into Pull Mode.

Here’s an extract from one of my own Dialogues which deals with this question:

Q. I’m feeling a bit discouraged today because i seem to have spent most of today so far in Drift Mode.

A. Do you have any ideas as to why that might be?

Q. I don’t know. I guess the difference is the vision, but how do I keep my eye on the vision?

A. Your aim is to follow your feelings. What happens to your feelings in Drift Mode?

Q. I feel frustrated, aimless, sometimes bored as well.

A. So you don’t feel good?

Q. No. I know what you’re getting at. I should use a question like “How Good Do You Feel?” That would be a good way to identify when I’m in Drift Mode, wouldn’t it?

A. I think so. Are there any other ways that you can think of?

Q. Yes, I think Drift Mode brings resistance. So maybe the “What am I resisting?” would work too. Is there anything else?

A. Maybe you could identify those negative emotions directly.

Q. On the other hand, perhaps I am just not very good at doing what I feel like when I feel like it. Do you think that one solution might simply be to accept my feelings?

A. So, “It’s fine that I’m feeling frustrated/aimless/bored. I’ll let it lift when it feels like doing so”?

Q. Yes, that goes with the basic Pull Mode attitude: “I’ll do it when I feel like doing it and not before”.

A. I think you want to keep away from having to give answers to questions like “What am I resisting?” as far as Pull Mode is concerned. The whole idea is to have freedom.

Q. What about a question I don’t actually have to give an answer to like “Is this what I want to be doing?” All I have to do is let my behaviour modify itself in response to the question.

A. I like the sound of that. Try it out - that’s the only way to find out if it works.

Q. Or would it be better as “Is this what I feel like doing?”

A. There’s only one way to find out, but my money is on “want” rather than “feel”. It lifts you up above your feelings to the vision. That’s my theory, but it’s only a theory as yet.

"How To Make Your Dreams Come True"

I feel that I’ve taken SuperFocus about as far as I can for the time being, and so I have turned my attention back to my second book (of three) How To Make Your Dreams Come True. This book is now out of print, but you can download it for free by clicking here.

I’m seriously thinking of re-writing this book as an e-book. It’s very different both in content and style from my other two books, and I think the style tended to put many people off. What I think is needed is a clear manual which is much easier to follow.

In the meantime, many of the issues raised by Dreams are being explored by the Forum members. See the threads:

Personal Experience with Mark’s “How To Make…”

What to Expect Initially From Dreams

I would welcome input, either in the Comments to this post or in the Forum, from anyone who has used or is using the Dreams principles.

Most Popular Content

Over the last 30 days the most popular articles and discussions on this site have been:

Rules for SuperFocus

The AutoFocus System

Discussion: Latest Variation

Discussion: Testing a Variation of SuperFocus

Other People's Poor Time Management

This is a guest post by Nicole, winner of the competition for the best answer to the question: “How can you avoid being let down by other people’s poor time management?”

The only way to avoid being let down by other people’s poor time management, is to make sure that their time management problem doesn’t become *your* problem. That’s easy to say, but it can a bit difficult to actually achieve.

The way to avoid making other people’s poor time management your own problem will be different depending on the relationship you have with that person. When you’re dealing with a boss with poor time management skills, you can’t just say “It’s your problem, you solve it.” For example, your boss may come in with an urgent question that he needs you to answer for him today, but you’re still busy working on the urgent project that he assigned you last week and that’s due tomorrow. The only way to solve this is to let your boss make the call on what can wait. Point out what your workload is, what you can deliver in what timeframe, and let him decide on what’s most important. This way, you’ll make it clear that you’re willing to do your part, but that you can’t do the impossible, so if he keeps asking the impossible it will be his problem, not yours.

Sometimes you’ll have to deal with poor time management of co-workers. If you know this beforehand, make sure to agree with the person you’re both reporting to where the boundaries of your mutual responsibilities are, and point out where you are dependent on work by others. This is actually not different from common project management techniques: try to figure out beforehand where the risks are, factor in enough time to deal with the risks, or have a plan B in place. Don’t fall into the trap of doing it yourself when work promised by others is not delivered. Apart from making you a very popular co-worker, this will only signal to your co-workers and to your boss that they can get away with it, because any problems they’re causing will be solved by you. When a project is very important you may do this once, but do this repeatedly and you’ll burn out very quickly.

A third situation is when you’re dealing with poor time management in subordinates. In this case, you need to give them just enough assistance to get them going, but not so much that you’re doing significant portions of the work yourself. Coach them into creating a schedule for what they committed to doing, and make sure it’s their own schedule. Ask them if they think it’s a reasonable schedule, and what they will do if something turns out to be more work than they expected. If they agree to a reasonable schedule but still fail to stick to it, let them explain why. If there was an emergency, could they have foreseen it, or factor in additional time to compensate? This way, you keep them accountable for what they committed to, instead of making their time management problem your own problem.

In all these cases, it’s very important to be clear about your own commitments. If you promise to deliver, make sure you deliver. You have to make sure that you take your own commitments seriously, because that’s the only way you can expect the people around you to do the same for their own commitments. Also make sure to remind people about their commitments. If a co-worker promised to deliver a report by Monday morning, remind him by noon if it’s not there. If you wait till Tuesday you’ll give the impression that it could have waited anyway, so next time he will not take your deadlines seriously. If for some reason it’s not possible to set a crisp deadline, you still want to remind them periodically about it. Putting a task for this in SuperFocus, for example “Remind J about policy document?” has proved very effective for me. When this task stands out, it means it’s bugging me enough to start bugging J about it. If it doesn’t stand out, apparently it’s not important enough yet to bother with it. This way, my own time management system helps me clarify my own priorities to the people I work with.

Usually you don’t need to evangelize about your time management system to your co-workers. People will notice that you’re reliable to work with, and they will want to work with you. As a result, you can be picky about who you agree to work with and of course you’ll choose to work only with the reliable ones. In the last job where I had a direct boss, it took him only a few months and one project with an unreliable co-worker to realise that I would be far more effective working with the people I chose to work with instead of the people he assigned me to work with. Problem solved!

Final Date for Competition

Since there haven’t been any further entries for the competition for a while I shall be closing it at midnight tonight EST (5 a.m. UK Time). Still time for last minute entries!

The subject is:

How can you avoid being let down by other people’s poor time management?

Answers in the comments section of the original post.

Competition Time

I think it’s time for another competition. So let’s see who can give the best answer to the following question:

How can you avoid being let down by other people’s poor time management?

Answers please in the Comments below. As usual, all comments will be deleted on an ongoing basis except the five best answers to the question in my opinion.  Do not refer to other people’s answers in your reply as their answer may get deleted.

All comments that are not answers to the question will be deleted immediately.

Once the supply of new answers seems to be drying up I will set a deadline for last entries.

The judge’s decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

The first prize will be for your entry to be featured as a guest post on this blog. Previous winners were Mike Brown and Seraphim.

SF Tips - #8: Dismissal

The concept of dismissal is distinctive to the AF/SF family of systems. Dismissing tasks is one of the most essential part of SuperFocus.

It is important to realise that the rules about dismissal effect the way one treats all the tasks in the system, not just the ones to which the dismissal rules are being applied. Therefore for the system to work properly, it is very important that you keep to the rules about dismissal.

If you are working the system properly then dismissal should be an automatic process. You don’t decide which tasks should be dismissed or not dismissed. The only question is whether a task has “stood out” for action and, if not, whether it is now liable for dismissal.

When a task is dismissed it should not be seen as a failure in any way. In fact, it simply means that the system is working as it should.

Consider the types of task that may be found on the pages of a SuperFocus notebook:

• Unactioned tasks
• Deleted completed tasks
• Re-entered recurring tasks
• Re-entered unfinished tasks (Column 2)
• Urgent tasks (Column 2)
• Dismissed tasks awaiting review
• Finally deleted unactioned tasks.

These different categories of tasks provide a hugely effective sifting process, which classifies tasks more or less automatically for action, urgent action, little-and-often work, review and final deletion. Because of this sifting, the system does not need pre-sifting. You can enter all potential tasks and projects into the system, and let the system deal with them.

SF Tips - #7: Tasks that are both urgent and unfinished

A task that is both urgent and unfinished will normally have started life as an urgent task, though it is possible that an unfinished task may become urgent during its lifetime.

Two examples of urgent and unfinished tasks are:

1. an urgent task that wasn’t finished the first time it was worked on
2. a larger task deliberately selected for regular treatment

Writing this tip is an example of the first. I decided it was urgent because I wanted it done sooner than I would reach it in the normal course of things. I knew I needed to do a first draft before finalising it, so allowed time for two sessions of writing it.

Reading “War and Peace” was an example of the second. In order to get the book read quickly I decided it was “urgent” to get moving on it, and kept it in column 2. This meant I was reading it multiple times a day.

This provides a flexible way to do important projects while at the same time dealing with more trivial but necessary tasks.

To repeat what I said in my last two tips, it’s import to keep the tasks in Column 2 to a minimum. In particular it would be unwise to keep more than one, or possibly two, long term projects in Column 2 at a time.

Next tip: Dismissal

Case Study: Superfocus for Writing an Historical Novel

This is a guest post by Mike Brown, the winner of the competition for the best answer to the question “In SuperFocus, how would you handle the project of writing an historical novel and getting it published?”

Let’s say the novel I’m writing is about Shakespeare. My implementation would separate the fiction chores from the research chores from the selling/marketing chores (and any other chores that might arise).

I would rely on a calendar to prompt me to write the fiction. For most other tasks, I could use SF.

First, I’d probably start a separate notebook or file to hold all my notes and reference material on characters, scenes, etc that bubble up in my imagination about the novel.

Then, I’d set aside a specific time period daily in my calendar to work on the fiction side of the novel. This would become, in the parlance of “Do It Tomorrow,” the “current initiative.” This is where I wrestle with character, motivation, plot, dialogue, etc.

Which comes first, the research or the story? Since I’m an establishing historical novelist, let’s say I already know certain basics: what was the typical food/drink during the Elizabethan era, how big were the rooms, how heavy or scratchy were the clothes, how were the theatrical companies organized, what were the political crises boiling during that time? But I may need to know more about certain specifics that I didn’t need to know in my previous novels. Those questions are great SF Column 1 tasks — as I research them and find the answers, I note them in my project file.

Any research questions that never get answered may prove to be just hard questions, or ill-defined, or maybe even unimportant given how the story is progressing. SF’s dismissal rules would force me to confront these issues and get clarity on them.

SF would become the perfect place to remind me to check whether the library has this or that book or article, so I could answer these questions.

I’d probably set myself a time period to do the background research and reading, and then set a start date to begin actually writing scenes, outlining, etc. I would not put this into SF per se; I find greater comfort in allotting time in the calendar to do this work.

However, during the writing, research questions would inevitably pop up: What would Shakespeare have eaten for Christmas dinner? Did they even celebrate Christmas in his time? Would there have been occasions where he and Christopher Marlowe would have been seen together at the same time in the same place? These become critical questions that would go into the C1 column as I was writing the scene. (Actually, I’d probably just write the questions IN ALL CAPS in the middle of the scene so as not to interrupt my writing flow. I’d then go back after my writing session to transcribe these questions into SF.)

Or, if the matter was urgent enough, I would write the question into Column 2, as subsequent scenes may hinge on the research I dig up. If the question is big and important enough, then continual work on the problem via C2 rules would bring some kind of closure.

So, I would suggest using SF as a way to track research tasks related to the story’s background and setting, but I’d trust the actual writing of scenes to my calendar. Researching and writing would happen alongside each other. I could, I suppose, include a recurring C2 task as “Write for 2 hours,” but I believe that sort of commitment belongs outside of SF.

SF could also be a place to hold the housekeeping notes related to the project — print out 50 pages for the next writers group meeting, send current draft to my first readers, etc. Also, the business of marketing and selling the novel would be ideal for SF: such tasks as research agents, draft proposal letters, research ebook formats, contacting bookstores to set up readings, etc. I could write all these tasks down as I think of them, but trust my intuition to let me know when they’re ready to be worked. They may have to be dismissed if they arise too early in the process; that’s OK, they can always be reviewed and rescued later.

Meanwhile, engaged in the years of slogging needed to write such an important book, I would use SF to handle all of the other tasks that need to be tracked and completed in my life alongside the novel — balance the checkbook, vacuum the house, call Mom, buy birthday card, etc. These will take on various levels of importance or urgency, as they always do even when not writing a blockbuster historical pot-boiler.

Another way of doing this same work would be to include a subset of novel-specific tasks in my project file, in SF format, with my primary SF notebook simply holding pointers to the file, such as “Novel research?” or “Start novel edit on March 3?”. Or even just “Novel,” and that would send me to my project file for my SF tasklist waiting for me to attack it.

Competition Report - 2

Since there have been no more serious entries yesterday or today I will bring this competion to an end at midnight (UK time) tomorrow. That still gives plenty of time for people to write a winning contribution.

I’ve been rather surprised at the low number of entries because this is a subject which has been discussed frequently and at length on the Discussion Forum. Reasons given for not writing entries have varied from the question being too hard to the question being too easy!

Just to stress the point again which I have made before. The question is not about producing a guide for aspiring historical novelists. It is about how to control a multi-faceted personal project (and by “personal” I mean only one person’s activities require to be co-ordinated).

Entries on the original post please, not here.

SF Tips - #6: Urgent Tasks

In my previous SF tip I talked about Unfinished Tasks. Now I want to deal with the other component of Column 2, Urgent Tasks.

It’s necessary first to establish exactly what is meant by “urgent” in this context. Urgency must not be confused with importance. As in Covey’s Four Quadrants, something may be Urgent but Not Important, Urgent and Important, Important but Not Urgent or Neither Urgent nor Important.

The only tasks which qualify for Column 2 are those that are Urgent but Not Important or Urgent and Important. It’s their urgency that qualifies them, not their importance.

So what is the definition of urgent? Basically urgency is user-defined. Something is urgent because you have decided that it is urgent. So to give some examples from a SuperFocus perspective:

1) Doing the dishes after a meal is urgent if you have decided that the dishes should be done after every meal. It’s not urgent if you have decided they should only be done once a day or less.

2) Clearing email is urgent if you have a policy that emails should be replied to immediately. It’s not urgent if your policy is that they should be be replied to within 24 hours.

3) Catching a bus is urgent if you have decided that you need to catch a particular bus. But if you have decided that it doesn’t matter which bus you catch, then it’s not urgent.

4) If you have decided that you are going to concentrate on one particular project today, then starting working on that project is urgent at the beginning of the day.

5) If you have decided that you are going to concentrate on a particular project over this week, then starting working on that project is urgent at the beginning of this week.

Basically an urgent task or project is something that you want to ensure that you work on before you move off the current page.

Note that just because you want to do something today doesn’t make it urgent (unless you are near the end of the day). You should be aiming to do at least one pass through your list per day, so all tasks will have had a chance of being worked on during the course of a day.

As with unfinished tasks, it’s important to keep the number of urgent tasks relatively small - otherwise you will bog the system down. Remember:- if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.

In the next tip I will talk about tasks that are both urgent and unfinished.

Related articles:

The Meaning of Urgent

Three Types of Urgent

Competition Report - 1

The current competition question is:

“In SuperFocus, how would you handle the project of writing an historical novel and getting it published?”

Assume you are already established as an historical novelist.

This competition is off to a bit of a slow start with only three attempts to answer the question so far, and only one of those has made any serious attempt to analyse what would be involved.

Just to clear up any confusion, the question is about how to handle a large, multifaceted, personal project in SuperFocus. The historical novel is just an example - a case study.

There’s plenty of scope for further answers. After all the pages and pages of discussion about project handling on the Discussion Forum, I’m sure there are many better answers to come.

Answers on the original post please. You can’t post them here.

Time for another Competition

Time for another competition, I think.

The question is:

“In SuperFocus, how would you handle the project of writing an historical novel and getting it published?”

Assume you are already established as an historical novelist.

Same rules as before:

1) Answers in the Comments to this post

2) All answers will be removed on an ongoing basis, except for the best five.

3) The competition will go on for as long as the judge (me) feels like it.

4) The best answer will be published as a guest blog post.

5) The judge’s decision is final.

Update on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 14:09 by Mark Forster

Please note that this competition will end at midnight tonight (22 March).

All in the Mind?

I got quite interested a few years ago in the soroban, the Japanese abacus, thinking that it might be good exercise for the mind. One of the fascinating things I discovered about it is that people can get so good at using it that they don’t need a physical soroban in order to do calculations. They can simply visualise one in their minds. See the video below.

After writing my piece yesterday about SuperFocus and brain power, I began to wonder whether the same might be true of SuperFocus: that after using it for a long period it might actually be possible to work SuperFocus without needing a physical notebook or electronic list. My thinking was that it probably wouldn’t be a case of visualising a list, but more that after constant use SuperFocus lays down patterns in the brain about how to handle just about every type of task. I have already discovered for example that I can do the daily recurring tasks in SuperFocus without needing to refer to the list.

What do you think?

Sarah's Day - A Demo of SuperFocus

Sarah, one of the Discussion Group members, has produced a demonstration of a day with SuperFocus. You can access it by clicking here.

Size it so that the page fits your screen, and then page through it so you get an animation effect.

Thank you, Sarah. I know it takes a huge amount of work to produce something like this.

Does Using SuperFocus Increase Your Brain Power? - My Answer

It’s noticeable that the majority of people who answered the question, including the winner Seraphim, did so from the perspective that SuperFocus increases the power that is able to be exercised by the brain when using SuperFocus. This is analagous to saying that our bodies can exercise more power by driving a car. This is true, but not the whole answer.

Consider the analogy I just gave. If we drive a car we are extending the power that our bodies control. But once we get out of the car and start walking, our bodies have the same power as before - or perhaps even less since we might have become much fitter by walking instead of taking the car.

But if we extend the power of our bodies by riding a bicycle, we are also at the same time making our bodies fitter. When we stop cycling and start walking again we are able to do so more effectively.

So the question is really: “Is SuperFocus the equivalent of the car or the bicycle in these analogies?”. Or to put it another way, as a result of using SuperFocus do our brains work more powerfully even when we’re not using SuperFocus?

My answer is that I don’t know. No research has been done on this, and I don’t have even enough anecdotal experiences to begin to give a definite answer. But there are some factors which I think might indicate that the subject is worth investigating.

Not so long ago it was considered that once one had reached adulthood the brain was to all extent and purposes fixed. Nowadays there is an increasing understanding that this is far from the case. The brain is now seen as very plastic. It is made up of millions of chemical pathways, which form patterns which can be re-arranged, re-connected and added to.

There’s also an increasing appreciation that the brain is part of the body and behaves in much the same way as the rest of the body. A person has a basic genetic inheritance for their body, including the brain, and this can be built on using the right sort of exercise. Of two people with similar genetic inheritances one might be a champion athlete and the other a couch potato. One might do little with their brain other than watch tv, while the other by contrast might be a leading mathematician.

So in what ways might SuperFocus provide the right sort of exercise for the brain?

To answer that we need to look at the way in which the brain increases its strength, and also what the main inhibitors on that increase are.

The brain works by establishing chemical pathways which permit the passage of electrical currents. In the absence of very strong stimuli, these pathways are primarily set up by repetition. Once a pathway is set up it will tend to decline if there is no further repetition. Like the processes which take place in the body after exercise, such as weight lifting, chemical changes in the brain take place between stimuli. This is why good learning and thinking requires time for maturation.

SuperFocus works with these brain processes in several ways. The most important of these is “little and often” which provides optimal maturation and repetition. This maturation process is also seen in the “universal capture” aspect of SuperFocus. The pattern of recurring tasks provides repetition so that patterns are laid down in the brain which result in an economy of effort.

The main inhibitors which prevent the laying down of effective patterns in the brain are stress and lack of persistance.

Stress manifests itself in many ways, which include overwhelm, paralysis, compulsive actions, brain fog, procrastination, adrenaline addiction, etc. SuperFocus is renowned for its ability to remove the stress from working. This is not entirely confined to the times when one is actually using the system because the stress reduction allows for optimum brain patterning.

Lack of persistance manifests itself in a failure to finish work that has been started and a compulsive jumping from one system or way of working to another. SuperFocus stresses finishing, which in itself exercises the brain in persistence. It also provides an addictive feeling of flow which tends to keep people working the system rather than constantly changing it.

So taking all this together - optimal conditions for brain patterning together with the removal of the main inhibitors - leads me to suppose that consistent use of SuperFocus over a period of time may well lead to actual physical changes in the brain equivelent to physical exercise making the body stronger.

I can’t prove any of this, but I do believe that it is well worth investigation.