Power in an Hour

by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com

The hit-home theme in The Power of an Hour is focus.
Author Dave Lakhani coins the concept "fearsome focus."
He shows how to be focused, productive and exceptionally effective in business and life.

As a trained kick boxer and SWAT Law enforcement officer, he learned how to execute high levels of concentration in very critical short episodes of time. When applied to our lives you can gain precise powerful focus. An hour is the best period of time to stay at one's peak in mental concentration and getting and staying in a great work flow. The rule is to organize the day in one-hour focused blocks of time. Here's his structures for doing it.

First you must discover where you need to change.
Clearly identify what you want to change.
Apply both critical and creative thinking structures for finding new solutions.
Identify the next steps and schedule change.
Take action.
Finally, you evaluate, measure and reward your success.

The process is much more powerful than appears. The power comes from following the processes precisely. The greatness of it is that it can easily be molded into our behavior to make it a functional style of work. Some see this as too simplistic. Although, if and when you do it, it works.

After you have identified what you want to change,
Lakhani gets you into the process for focus. This is his signature theme...fearsome focus.

The first four steps set the stage. This precedes the "delving into" part that gives you a fearless head start mentally.
1. Clearly define on what you'll focus your effort on.
2. Define, simple and clearly, the action steps necessary to accomplish the project.
3. Surround yourself with the tools, all the tools, materials, resources you will need while on the project. (This is so important as when you don't have them and break from your focus, you lose great amounts of mental momentum. This can break flow, which creates productivity power and helps you produce at extremely high quality levels.)
4. Do not allow distractions to divert your attention. (The 45/15 rule helps with this. Explained later.)
5. Launch into the project. When you have your plan for the project (#2) before you, you just start. You then move from step to step, dismiss distractions, and get right back to your focus.
6. Evaluate your progress by checking action steps, and instantly reengaging.
7. If you are confronted with interruptions, mental distractions, just acknowledge them. Do what you need to do to dismiss it and instantly reengage. "Instant" re-engagement is also critically important. With your plan at hand, you can do it... instantly.
8. Continue all action steps until completed.
9. Acknowledge completion and relax.

His 45/15 rule applies to all his processes, except critical thinking(where you stay engaged the full hour). Lakhani advocates working for 45 minutes on the project and then taking 15 minutes to send the email, return the phone call, get a drink, go to the restroom. He feels 45 minutes is a good momentum time, but after 45 minutes higher levels of quality effort begin to wane. So break, do a few other things, take care of the distractions...phone, email, or anything mental that is bugging you, or something you can handle quickly. This frees your mind for full engagement as you move into the next hour.

Now with your plan at hand, reengage again on the next project or the next part of the project you were on. Again, with your tools at hand, your next 45 minutes defined on what you plan to accomplish, you start.

Some ask about writer's block. He says with his method he doesn't get writer's block because you have prepared the brain to reengage. When you condition it to start... it starts. It gets used to just starting.

Tips for focus success:
--Schedule specific times that you focus. Try to make them the same everyday or week. Focus responds very much the same way to predictable times.
--Create an environment that supports your focus, and focus in that environment consistently.
--Expand your ability to concentrate. (This skill is learned by working through his book-- one hour at a time.)

"What specifically do I what to focus on?"
--Evaluate the areas of my company that I most want to improve and develop a complete plan with action steps to improve.
--Evaluate the information collected from previous questions and work through the answers to fully understand why I am undertaking this action.
--List the specific steps that are necessary to achieve the desired results.
--Add deadlines to each step.
--Note who will be involved in or responsible for each step if others are involved.
--Allocate and schedule the time for this action plan and associated steps to be implemented.
--How will you define success so you know that you've been successful?
--What is the one action step you can take this very moment that will initiate this action plan?

Then in the rest of the book he continues to lay the ground work for critical thinking, creative thinking, setting the stage, identify blocks, destroying blocks. He has a chapter for each of these.

He features personal areas: relationships, finances, self-improvement, mental vacation, life visioning, overcoming fear and reinvent yourself. Plus he has nine business hour chapters: business focus, time management, management, sales and marketing, customer experience, making connections, mentoring, giving back, the final hour and calling it a day.

All these areas can be assigned priorities for change. He leads you through making it an hour of power.

I have found in reading books, an hour of reading time at a sitting is the most productive, focused, mentally attaining hour I can have. It is better to split a more ambitious read in three separate hours during the day...morning, midday and late day. I can read most books in three or four days. The more you do it, the more your concentration increases to pull important information off the page. It's like anything...the more you do it, the faster and better you get at it. I overview a book, create a plan for reading and then stick to the plan. It works for me.

Dave Lakhani’s website is:
http://www.powerofanhour.com/

Life coach, Lora Newman, elaborates on how the law of attraction works the same way to bring into our lives what we focus on. It has strategic effect on us at work and at all times.

“Where you focus will expand. If you think about your woes and worry about things that have not happened, you are putting energy into those things and likely to bring them about. The trick is to focus on and have faith about the things you do want. This breathes life into them and increases the probability of them happening. You find what you look for.” www.loranewman.com
www.lifeuniversitycoach.com


Then there's the power hour to add to the list.
It's the power hour that Jesus used. It's the power that can come to you in Spirit. The power that over comes temptations, life's most cruel events. It leads you from death to live in everything. It gives you the power to live Super-naturally. A power that goes out to elicit every force available in the universe that will come jettisoning to your aid.

Jesus said, “Then he returned and found the disciples asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Couldn't you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Mark 14: 37, 38, NLT)

Jesus asks... can't you pray just one hour.
Why is this so significant?
After His intense, highly focused hour in prayer Jesus was able to:
--overcome a beating that should have killed him... the most barbarous beating a person could face;
--carry a splintered, piece of wood on a back of raw torn flesh;
--then keeping enough composure in the most excruciating pain a person can't even imagine, asking God to forgive those who are doing this to Him.
This is just not possible in human means.
And it is not possible in a human context.

This is what the power hour can do. Jesus had the most incredulous experience ever.
What He faced and went through was unimaginably horrendous.
He even died... but more than that, remarkably... He didn't stay there.

The Spirit of God itself re-entered His body and He appeared in just three days to those who knew Him.

What's this all about?
It's about the Power Hour. Just one hour.
The same Spirit that Jesus had can enter you in the Power Hour.
The Spirit will come to you to strengthen you, and move you into a Super-natural life. This Spirit draws to you every conceivable and inconceivable force that exists and can come to you. All the forces that are available in the endless structures of the universe… come running to you.

This one hour, put in your routine of the day can mobilize the strength you need, deter distractions that may rob from you, and give you unfathomable results. This is the Power Hour in Spirit.

It is a focus on God's Great Spirit that brings you all you can imagine, plus more… more than you can even dream up. Add the Power Hour in Spirit. Tap into what Jesus tapped in to.

And no matter what you face, the seemingly unattainable achievements that loom just ahead of you, you can Super-naturally rise from the face of death to Super abundance in life. This Spirit brings love, happiness, contentment. Your day will walk in the Super-natural systems from above that control what is here on earth.

Take time for your power hour focus in Spirit
and see Jesus Spirit, death defying power
work in you!