Your Focus makes all the Difference

This is a topic one of my readers suggested. What is chunking? I feel this depends on whether you ask a writer, psychologist, or an adult training specialist. It depends on whether you’re talking about a context of memory or information processing or motor learning or e-learning.

The experts in different fields have different ways of describing the process of chunking. Ironically the end result is pretty much the same, just described from opposite perspectives!

The concept of chunking originated in a 1950s journal article by Harvard psychologist George A. Miller. He proposed that human beings have restricted short-term memory (also referred to as working memory) and that they can generally only pay attention to about 7 items of information at a time.

Some people explain chunking as a process of breaking information down into bite-sized chunks, while others describe the chunking principle as requiring that items be classified into groups to avoid information overload. 

Now, I wanted to focus on the psychology behind this process. Look at the image to the left. Imagine that the blue rod is your goal. The rod at the top is massive and large while the one at the bottom is still of the same length, while just in portions. What you are focusing on is what is driving your emotions.

I now want to give you three different scenarios. Imagine you are at a fair grounds. A man with a ring toss offers you a 1 ring to throw around the target. In the first scenario the prize is a $50 gift card, in the second scenario the prize is $1000 cash, and the third scenario the prize is $1,000,000 tax-free. Now, in each of these situations, you walked up with the same skill. Yet, since your eye if set on a different goal, it makes everything different.

Imagine holding the ring, saying to yourself, "I could use an extra $50 bucks. This will be so easy." Imagine holding and speaking, "This is my only chance to ever get $1,000,000." Which of these scenarios would you most likely win the prize.

Our Dreams and Goals are like this. When we focus on reaching our final goal in one step, the anxiety builds and we sometimes don't believe we can achieve it because it is overwhelming. Yet, it we Chunk the Goal into smaller goals that can be reached in daily steps, than the anxiety is lost.

Our final dream is still the same, even if we break down into steps. I can still remember when one of my friends told me, "I said it will be SIMPLE, NOT EASY." He told me to write down one of my big goals, and put on a date to achieve it. It looked overwhelming. So, showed me how to Chunk it down smaller goals, and when I should reach them. This I now believed I could do.

I know I can't reach my final goal in one leap, yet every day I can take a step forward. If you are looking for a method to break you dream into smaller goals, CLICK HERE