And now for the other side of that argument : which I am choosing, right now, to think of as focus. By sometime in the next paragraph, I will probably switch to some other thought. I’ll try to warn you in advance.
I hear noises – no. That’s not quite right. I used to hear noises about this strange beast called focus. I believe there was something about “focusing” on one thought, one piece of work. I decided that I didn’t trust the institutional educators, and went off on my own.
Focus is a problem. There are two sides to focus – there’s the finding time, motivation focus. That one, I need, but have some issues finding. Then there’s the one that tends to cause me trouble when other people are looking: disciplinary focus. By which, in this instance, I mean sticking to one, fairly narrow, field. I’d get so bored! Also, what would I do at times like these: when what I need to do is let something sit, at the back of my mind, developing until it has enough substance to stand the light of day? I mean, good grief. What’s wrong with trying to learn everything, preferably all at once?
That, my dear reader, is a rhetorical question. Still, I prefer to try to learn as much as possible. Much more interesting, less likely to end in boredom. The problem is, for this approach to work, time management suddenly becomes ridiculously important.
I haven’t figured that out yet.
I’m not even quite sure I’ve even got the whole linear narrative flow down, and after reading some Zizek earlier, I don’t have a lot of faith in my grasp of English sentence structure.
Well, that’s what keeps it interesting. Some of the problem is that I prefer to understand histories from a practical standpoint – which only works in art and some social areas, but it does make a difference as far as I’m concerned. Would I have the same level of interest in copyright if I didn’t know where it came from and why? Probably not.
Admittedly, some of it is just distractability. I keep circling disciplines entirely unlike the ones I claim as mine; I suspect that I am waiting for the right teacher to come along. It’s more fun to have random fragments of knowledge than it is to ignore most of the possibilities lurking about; so I have to keep reminding myself that self-discipline is key, and crush my impatience.
The biggest argument against focus is patience. Think about that.