You've decided to improve your health by going to the gym. That is, you've chosen to focus on your health. Focus is about intention. It's what you're choosing to attend to. It's where decisions are made. You choose something (or some things) to focus on, and exclude others.

Focus can be very high level, like deciding to prioritize your health, but it can also be choosing which body part to focus on on a particular day at the gym.

So this is focus: choosing where to put your attention.

When you get to the gym for the first time, you notice a LOT going on. There's music playing, people everywhere doing all sorts of exercises you've never seen before, and everyone's really fit and attractive. In other words, there's a lot for the senses to take in and it feels overwhelming.

This is where attention comes into play. Attention is the spotlight of the mind. It's what enables your brain to hone in on some stimuli while excluding others. Without attention, we'd be paralyzed due to overstimulation.

So attention is more about the general capability to focus on something. It can be short-term, like watching someone do a specific exercise for a few seconds so you can try it yourself later, or it can be more sustained like when you paid attention to the person giving you the tour of the gym when you arrived.

In truth, you're always paying attention to something at any given moment. Sometimes it's for a second, other times it's for a lot longer. But attention is something we all naturally have.

Attention can be divided into several types, including sustained attention, selective attention, and divided attention. These types reflect how we focus on continuous activities, pick out specific details in a complex environment, or manage multiple tasks simultaneously.

Now you're finally getting set up at the squat rack. You've loaded weights onto the bar and you're about to start your first set. But as you begin the movement, your mind wanders to all the errands you have to do after the gym. In this moment, you've got focus, and you even have attention. But you're lacking something else: concentration.

Concentration is a subset of attention. It's the ability to maintain focused attention on a task or activity over a period of time, resisting distractions and maintaining mental effort.

Fortunately, you notice your mind wandering and you're able to pull it back to the task at hand, only to find yourself at the bottom of a squat, unsure what rep you're on. Your attention was divided, not concentrated.

So you bring your attention back to the exercise, now giving it your full concentration. You are now completely present. Your mind isn't thinking about anything else other than what you're doing right now. You no longer hear the music in the background or see people walking around. There's zero distraction. Instead, you feel into your legs shaking and your heart pumping. You sense your facial muscles straining and can hear the grunting sound as you push through your final rep.

If you think back to the different types of attention, concentration falls under the sustained attention type. Concentration is the most concentrated form of attention. It is the foundational skill to learning, to creativity, to communication.

Sure, you can exercise without concentrating, but to get the most value from your time spent doing so, concentration is critical. It means being fully present and fully engaged in where you are and what you've chosen to focus on. And if you've chosen to be there, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not giving it your full, undivided attention.

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