405 nanometers
_{The frequency that cuts through everything.}

You've found the site for the concept of Laser Focus, tools and techniques for cutting through hard problems with precision. Here, you'll learn how to take on challenges you never thought possible for yourself. And how to tackle them in far less time than you expected.

Read on.

I'm going to undertake some extreme challenges ahead, like:

1. Sewing a sling bag that keeps its CG balanced and brings the contents of pockets up to your hand when you reach in.


2. Learning a new programming language (Rust) that I've never seen before, and then writing a simple operating system in it.


3. Building a compact, disappearing storage system for my small bedroom.

And probably a couple of other crazy ideas

There is (ahem) some recommended reading:

1. Atomic Habits, by James Clear. This will teach you how to make your daily routines effortless, while committing to constant, steady improvement.


2. Getting Things Done, by David Allen. This builds on the ideas of Atomic Habits, allowing you to get every open loop in your life captured somewhere besides your head, which frees up your mind to actually do real thinking.


3. Deep Work, by Cal Newport. This futher builds on the ideas already explained above, helping you clear distractions and block out uninterrupted time to do your best work, every week.


4. Thinking Fast and Slow, by Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman. This explains the cognitive psychology of using your brain in ways that produce rare and valuable results -- while you're in "deep work mode."

What's missing from these (admittedly) excellent books?

It's just my opinion -- but one I share with many others.

The above bibliography gets you almost there. Cal Newport gives a few hints about how to use your mind during your deep work sessions, but none of these authors takes you all the way. You simply won't find many concrete instructions on how to really engage with the "blank page" when you sit down to work, or write, or code, or sew, or have that long-postponed, crucial conversation with a loved one.

In other words, these authors are amazing at telling you how to set aside time for real work and prepare your mind to be clear, facile and ready to work. But nobody really tells you what to do with all that cloistered time and undivided attention you've cultivated. You've cleared the land. You've got the lumber and the blueprints and the energy to build the house. But you have no tools.

Been bothering me for at least two years. Then one day recently, it hit me: "blank page." Exactly the right metaphor.

What is the one profession in which you must be able to think deeply, hold dozens of things suspended in your head (or on nearby mind-maps), and play with ten or twelve interweaving ideas without losing your focus? There are probably others, but the one that comes to my mind is writer. Especially journalists, but that's only because their deadlines are much shorter.

Then something began to click. Many names I'd read, many bios I'd consulted out of pure interest. Bradbury. Asimov. Chandler. Lamott. Doctorow. Trollope. Angelou. Dickens. Hemingway. Twain. Nabokov. Luhmann. Rowling. Heller. Caro. Eco. Faulkner. Checkov. Steinbeck. Quiller. Couch. Every one of these great (and prolific) writers gave us hours of amazing reading.

And each of them also gave us a writing technique, a way of tricking our deeper mind into coming out to play and sticking with the task until the work is done enough to share with the world.

The short version is that I'm starting to write a book: Laser Focus: Cutting Through Hard Problens with Precision. But I can't wait to share these things until the book is actually finished. So I'm doing two things, starting right now:

1. I'm taking on insane challenges in public to test my ideas and refine them, so I won't be writing about things I've only heard, but about things that I've lived and tried. If it doesn't really help? I'll just leave it out of the book.


2. I'm blogging about each of the ideas I've gotten from biographies of famous writers. Each technique gets a name (sometimes, two authors together, like the "Rowling-Heller Grid"). There will still be plenty of value left to share in the book, but some of these things despearately need to be out there now.

Hang on to your hat, if you still wear one. Wild ride ahead.