FCCS News & Insights

FocusFit Challenge Builds Mental Muscle

07/15/2021

So little time, so much to do. It confronts us all, how to spend our precious moments among work, family, friends and community. And while we can’t create more of it, we can make better use of the time we have.

The secret is focus, empowering every moment with purpose and clarity, free of distractions and mental clutter. The FocusFit Challenge offers measurable improvement in focus by building the skills that enable and strengthen a focused mindset, first identifying and then reinforcing simple steps to create an environment for focus.

“The FocusFit Challenge provides real solutions to real challenges around focus. Focus is a skill that can be strengthened, just like a muscle, through consistent application of the right practices,” says Curt Steinhorst, Focuswise founder and CEO and creator of the FocusFit Challenge.

The FocusFit Challenge from Focuswise is a four-week team and individual program built on three pillars crucial to developing focus: clarity, or identifying what deserves your attention; capacity, or increasing your ability to sustain focus; and curiosity, or developing the type of attention that leads to growth. Each week focuses on a specific aspect of building your focus – space, technology, time and people – and participants choose among related activities and skills from a deck of color-coded FocusFit Challenge cards. Journaling is another key aspect of the FocusFit Challenge, helping each individual identify their focus roadblocks and structure a personalized solution from among the comprehensive set of tools included.

FCCS undertook the FocusFit Challenge earlier this year, enrolling every employee as a way to equip the team with practical skills to increase concentration and focus to help them achieve their priorities, as well as prepare the organization to respond to future challenges.

“We’ve all come to recognize that resilience, the ability to shift and implement new strategies when things are unclear and outcomes uncertain, is critical to our organization, and one key facet to resiliency is the ability to focus on the matter at hand,” says Chad Moller, CEO of FCCS. “The FocusFit Challenge offers hands-on skills that ultimately become habits which can increase anyone’s focus and concentration, and that will strengthen all our employee’s, as well as our organization’s, resilience.”

Throughout the FocusFit Challenge, employees worked individually with the FocusFit Challenge deck, selecting skills and activities within each week’s topic. With challenges like “Wander and Wonder” to encourage a walk in nature to refresh your mind, “Throwing a Trash Party” to get all the little to-dos off the list, and “Zen-ify your Workspace” to create a clear desktop to clear your mind, the FocusFit Challenge is designed to be easily incorporated into anyone’s daily schedule.

FCCS employees also met weekly in small groups to have robust, individualized conversations about their experiences with implementing and practicing the focus exercises. These discussions were so valuable that the teams have opted to extend the FocusFit Challenge and continue their weekly check-ins.

“We’re all working at an accelerated pace and trying to balance the different aspects of our lives, and the FocusFit Challenge offers tools to enhance our ability to focus on the right thing at the right time,” says Jean Cantey Segal, FCCS Chief Learning Officer. “It’s also given people and leaders new ways to engage and connect with team members.”

The FocusFit Challenge includes an assessment of each participant’s focus, delivered both before and after the program. The target is a 20% improvement, though many participants feel like they gained even more.

“The FocusFit Challenge came at the perfect time for me,” says Heather Tseng, FCCS Affinity Program Sales & Marketing Manager. “I was overwhelmed by multiple priorities and constantly distracted by meetings, notifications, instant messages and my own inbox. FocusFit gave me tools and strategies to find clarity, increase capacity and grow through curiosity.”

In addition to developing the FocusFit Challenge and leading Focuswise, Curt is a respected speaker and consultant on focus and attention, and has worked with Farm Credit’s Group of 30 as well as multiple System associations. For more information about the FocusFit Challenge or Focuswise services, visit the Focuswise website.

“We’re talking about the effective allocation of the most limited and competed-over resource that any individual has, or organization has access to. The biggest challenge we face is the limit of human attention.”

Curt Steinhorst
Focuswise Founder and CEO
Creator of the FocusFit Challenge