The Window of focus

Recently, I got this wooden frame from one of my colleague's sweet box that he brought from Dubai. The nicely finished softwood frame was an enclosure for the compartment that held high quality dates with nuts studded to them. The sweet was nice, but the wooden frame was better to catch my eye. I still don’t understand what pushed me to grab it from the trashes and keep it as souvenir.

I grabbed it, without understanding what I would do with it. My initial thoughts were that its geometrically good looking shape may serve as a good frame for my important notes on the desk board. Then I tried to assume it as a photo frame to highlight a photo, but that meant a photo to be placed on my desk, which was for sure a 'no'. And then, with total indecisiveness on its fate, I placed it over the corner of my cubicle, right at my eye level.

The frame has become an eye-catcher since then and I have become a target to whole set of jokes, questions and satires. Some call it a window to hear, some call it window to watch on-goers etc. , but what all of them see in common, is a window. And so do l, consequently, the way I placed it and with my intention to attach something meaningful to it, I have started calling it as my 'window of Focus '.

As simple it may sound, the Idea of having a window of focus has started appealing to me. The 12X15 cms. of the viewing area makes the rest of the view separated from it. I Look at it and only find what's limited within its boundaries. It restricts my options. It helps me see the details of a region, which I would otherwise ignore. It makes me appreciate the compactness of various components that make up that view. And as it stands tall and upright before my eyes, I see things from an angle that is purely mine.

This ordinary thing, as a concept, has proven more metaphoric than any other in recent times to me, in terms of its applicability. We are modern day jugglers, we juggle with many clubs, namely personal life, professional life, E-Life (Social Networking) and creative life (Creative Things that we really want to do.). We all feel this pain of missing out on an important thing while pursuing a rather common one. We all look for a view that would give us what we need to look for to achieve the best.  A need to appreciate the components that make our lives is felt at every stage we hit. But the time we are left with to achieve it, challenges us all.

So a window, four wooden walls of parameters that can separate our worldly activities from the ones that are needed the most, can make this work .So, Let me help you out with creating one such window.


To start with, Making a choice on the parameters (Walls) is most time staking but indeed is one time job. If done nicely can create a frame that would always give the best view possible and help us act on the right areas. To suggest, these walls can be Time, Money, Health and Emotions. Now the activities to focus may be judged on these areas through a series of questions like:

·         What are the activities That need immediate attention?--Time

·         What are the activities that if not done, would put me in financial loss?--Money

·         What needs to be done to keep me in good health?--Health

·         What needs to be done to keep me emotionally upright?--Emotions.

An objective listing of the answers to above, can give a good score to prioritize the activities to be done. And so..You get your focus..

Now as easy it may sound, the window made up of the above walls can be very big and may keep you bewildered for  a considerable amount of time, for the simple reason being, the generality of these parameters (walls). These parameters are more or less a part of most of the things we take up, while the value of each differs in everything we do. Clearly, we got an area of focus, but then it’s still bit big. So to restrict our view further, we create another window within this window.  This time with more specific walls.To suggest here, these can be Work, Family, Self and Society. And we perform the same steps again, this time on the areas derived from the previous window, here the questions would be:

·         What are the activities important for my family.--Family

·         What needs to be done to deliver satisfactory results at work.--Work

·         What are the activities that make me feel better as human being.--Self

·         What are the activities that make me a better social being.--Society

The window within window gives a better focus now. This can be further developed telescopically, till the  point focus is achieved. The beauty of 'windows of focus' is that the two windows may be built with parameters totally independent of each other but would still give a sensible view. 

The focused views thus prepared, can not only provide you the areas of focus, but also the areas of challenges and hence can help you gather the right ammunition to overcome those. By gathering the right focus, the challenges can be tacked in time, well before they become problems.  So create your own window of focus and appreciate the wooden frame.