Feature Walkthrough 3
FOCI’s Focus Boost
| See how Emily uses FOCI’s Focus Boost to find balance and focus, in the face of challenges on her new job. |
Emily is a newcomer, who has just entered the workplace. Compared to the flexible schedule at school, the fast-paced workplace, and the highly competitive environment makes it difficult for her to adapt. Time, always seems to be insufficient. The overtime alone is a nightmare. More and more deadlines on her to-do list are getting closer, fueling her anxiety. Although she wants to start strong every morning, she feels distractible once she gets to the office. She feels it’s difficult to focus, and her work productivity isn't improving. She feels her brain is often in a state of chaos. "I haven't done much every day, but I always feel very drained”, this is Emily's description of her current situation.
However, the up or out policy in her workplace means that she faces elimination if she doesn't evolve. She has been trying to find ways to get in a more focused state and to make her work more productive. To this end, she tried a meditation course, but it was difficult to find the intuition, and she couldn't get meaningful feedback. In the end, it came to nothing.
What surprised Emily was FOCI's biofeedback training. This kind of visual and auditory active guidance and timely feedback helps her quickly calm down from an anxious state, and find the clarity and focus in only a few minutes. Now a few minutes of training on biofeedback has become her routine before the start of her day's work, just like a warm-up exercise before the jog. After mastering the first level of biofeedback training, she finds that she's beginning to get a hang of controlling her attention, which makes her look forward to mastering the more advanced four levels of biofeedback training.
Compared to her previously fuzzy understanding of her emotions, FOCI's Negative Emotion Analytics is like having her own emotions mapped out to her. It intuitively shows Emily the paths of how her emotion changes. She finds that she is mainly in burnout loop and anxiety loop. Chances are she gets stuck in burnout loop first, which then causes her to enter the anxiety loop. If she doesn't adjust in time, by this time, they would propagate into another negative emotion loops. Now Emily is learning to use the Cambridge Focus Framework to trace these emotional problems and make targeted adjustments in time.
Emily slowly recovers her sense of control over her work performance, and her frame of mind is becoming more positive. This allows her to focus more on her work, and as her work efficiency improves, she becomes more confident and calm in the face of new challenges in the workplace.
Focus Boost
What is it?
When the task feels taxing or demanding, this would trigger a natural impulse to procrastinate, that would lead you to put off tasks or fritter away time through distractions.
What to do:
Breaking this self-sabotaging Procrastinative Loop requires a fair amount of investment, as it requires emotion awareness and the right skills to tame our human nature.
You can learn to counter the effect of this loop in Focus Skill Level 2: Terminate procrastination with the knowledge of how to use psychological techniques augmented with tech to terminate procrastination.
What is it?
When your attention is easily grabbed by distractions or random thoughts, this would trigger a distractibility spiral, that would drain your focus and make you even more susceptible to distractions.
What to do:
Breaking this loop requires; first building natural (or not so natural) triggers, to help you detect the presence of this negative emotion vicious loop; then proceeding to reduce the general distractibility.
You can learn to counter the effect of this loop in Focus Skill Level 1: Tune out distraction with the knowledge of the chaotic nature of your brain and how to bring it under control in minutes with biofeedback.
What is it?
When the task is challenging or needs to be completed within a deadline, this would trigger a natural frustrative emotion response, that would prevent you from getting into flow.
What to do:
Breaking this loop is the highest hanging fruit, it is really about getting into your peak mental performance and that requires elimination of all other vicious loops as a prerequisite.
You can learn to counter the effect of this loop in Focus Skill Level 4: Getting into your peak mental performance with the knowledge of tuning emotion states with breath pacing to help you tune into flow.
What is it?
When your stress level is high, and you are in fatigue, this would trigger an unstable emotion anxious state, that would drain your mental capacity to maintain focus.
What to do:
Breaking this loop is totally manageable, however it requires the basic emotion awareness and basic techniques to regulate stress.
You can learn to counter the effect of this loop in Focus Skill Level 3: Sustain longer focus that gives the basic knowledge of how to detect and use techniques to regulate stress.
What is it?
When your exhaustion level is high from exertion or lack of good rest, this would trigger a progressive loss of motivation, that would drain your mental capacity to maintain focus.
What to do:
Breaking this loop is a high hanging fruit, it requires a fair amount of emotion awareness and basic skill of balancing fatigue and stress.
You can learn to counter the effect of this loop in Focus Skill Level 3: Sustain longer focus that gives the basic knowledge of how to detect and use techniques to regulate fatigue.
What is it?
When you are not under significant influence of negative emotion loops, and you are likely to be able to enter flow.
What to do:
You can learn how to step up your performance, in Focus Skill Level 4: Getting into your peak mental performance with the knowledge of tuning emotion states with breath pacing to help you tune into flow.
