六、内部提高(Internal Improvements)

Eliminating distractions, negotiating boundaries and optimizing your schedule are helpful, but they only go so far. Ultimately, it’s dealing with the obstacles to focus inside your own mind which separates those who have excellent focus and those who do not.
消除分心的事物、协商边界和优化日程很有用，但也仅限于此。最终区分有出色专注力和无法专注的人的，是如何应对自己头脑中阻碍专注的因素。

4.Progressive Training
四、渐进式训练

Imagine going to the gym, seeing the beach press and telling yourself you’re going to lift 300 lbs.the first day.That’s a recipe for injury and failure.
想象你去健身房，看到卧推，告诉自己第一天要举起300磅，那么等待你的就是受伤和失败。

In contrast, many people aim for schedules with amounts of focus far in excess of anything they’ve pulled off before, and then feel disappointed they couldn’t pull it off.If you struggle to focus for more than an hour at some task, and you plan to do it eight hours straight tomorrow, you can’t be surprised when your plans fail.
相比之下，许多人想要制定的计划所需的专注力远超过他们之前能达到的任何水平，当无法实现目标时，他们感到灰心失望。如果你很难在某项任务上坚持超过一小时，却计划明天连续做八小时，那么计划失败就不足为奇了。

The metaphor of progressive training is useful with focus for at least two reasons.First, there may be a real parallel between focus and muscular development.More time spent focusing may increase a general capacity for focus which improves over time. Although the neuroscience isn’t settled on this point, I think there’s a strong enough possibility for this kind of improvement to tentatively approach the problem this way.
渐进式训练的比喻对专注很有用，有两个原因。首先，专注力提高和肌肉生长之间可能确实存在可比性。随时间推移，更多时间专注可以增加整体的专注能力。尽管神经科学在这一点上尚未形成定论，但我认为这种提高很可能可以尝试性地解决专注问题。

Second, even if your deeper capacities for focus don’t grow like a bicep, the habits, behaviors, emotions and literally everything else surrounding focus can improve. These things take time and tweaking to figure out, so a progressive schedule for improvement is a better idea than going all in.
其次，即使你深层的专注能力无法像二头肌一样增长，但习惯、行为、情绪以及其他任何与焦虑有关的能力都可以得到提高。这些方面需要时间和不断的调整来找到最合适的方式，因此渐进式的提高计划比一下子全部投入的更好。

Here’s how you should slowly build up your capacity:
以下是如何慢慢增强专注能力的方法：

Start by measuring your current capacity. Spend a few days where all you do is work and keep a stopwatch running on your phone.Then, whenever you stop working to do something else(calls/bathroom/internet) press Stop and see what the number is. Averaged over a few days and different sessions, this should give you a realistic picture of where your focus is, not just where you’d like it to be.
1.从测量当前的专注能力水平开始。花几天的时间，其间全部的安排就是工作，同时打开手机上的秒表功能。每当你停止工作去做其他事（电话、洗手间、上网），就按下停止键，看看专注了多长时间。把几天中不同时段的数值平均，这将给你一个你的专注所处的水平的真实场景，而不仅仅是主观想像。

Work on building your focus duration.The first thing you can work on is building up your duration for focus.If you find yourself getting distracted after ten minutes, aim for fifteen.Set a timer for fifteen minutes and convince yourself to not switch tasks until it dings. Once you can comfortable get up to at least an hour consistently, this should be the main priority.
2.努力增加专注时长。你可以做的第一件事就是增加专注时长。如果你发现自己10分钟后就会分心，试着坚持到15分钟。设置1个15分钟的计时器，并说服自己在计时器响起之前不要切换任务。在你可以轻松地坚持专注至少1小时之前，这应该是主要的任务。

Next, work on your ability to return to focus, after a distraction. Whenever you get interrupted, reset your timer and try to push yourself to keep working further.Your goal should be to get back to working each time you get distracted. Although the mental interruption can derail your work, the real secret is to not let it permanently stall you.
3.接下来，致力于提高分心之后回到专注状态的能力。不论什么时候你被打断，重置计时器，并试着敦促自己继续工作。你的目标应该是每次分心后都能继续回来工作。虽然思路中断可能干扰工作，但真正的秘诀是不要让中断长久地阻碍你工作。

Finally, work on building up your speed of focus.This is your ability to “turn on” focus in shorter periods of time.This is harder to measure, but one way to do it is to give yourself shorter chunks of time and see if you can get some work done.The shorter a runway you can take off from ,the more you’ll be able to make use to the fragments of time that life gives you.
4.最后，致力于提高你的专注速度。这是你在更短的时间内“开启”专注的能力。这很难测量，但一种方式是看自己能否利用更小块时间完成一些工作。进入专注状态所需的“助跑”过程越短，就越能够利用生活留给你的碎片时间。

The recipe in each dimension of focus is the same: measure your current ability, make small efforts to improve and track those improvements.Doubling or tripling your ability to focus is doable, provided you’re careful in following these rules.
每个专注的维度的诀窍都是相同的：衡量你当前的能力，一点点努力提高专注能力并跟踪这些进步。只要你仔细遵循这些规则，让专注能力提高两倍甚至三倍都是可以做到的。