How a Magic Champion Wins at Life

The Power of Focus Blocks

I spent a decade writing my first book, Think Like a Game Designer. More accurately, I spent eight years procrastinating, then two years actually writing. During those first eight years, I looked at the monstrous task thinking I might as well have been asked to scale Mount Everest. I loved thinking about design and inspiring others to live more creative lives. I had done it countless times in seminars, at schools, and for my employees. I knew I had something to share, so why was it so hard to write it down?

When I looked at a blank page, the scope of the project froze me in my tracks. Inner demons haunted me. “You aren’t a writer,” they would whisper, “You can’t do this.” Inevitably, I would switch to a less intimidating task.

Responding to email is so much easier than writing a book.

For nearly a decade, I stared at the previous year’s resolutions and saw the incomplete goal: “Write a book.” The words glared at me like my eighth-grade teacher when I missed a homework assignment. (I didn’t know words could glare, but there you have it.)

In 2016, I had had enough. Instead of committing to writing about games, I committed to upping my writing game. I applied what helped me become a Magic World Champion to my writing career.

Getting better at Magic was easy for me. Magic, like all great games, gave me lots of opportunities to win and lots of useful feedback when I lost. Writing a book gave me limited opportunities to win, because a 50,000-word mountain stood between me and victory. My sense of failure kept me from sharing my writing. No sharing meant no feedback. No feedback meant no opportunity to improve. The game was rigged against me.

So, my 2016 New Year’s Resolution wasn’t “Write a book,” it was “Write twenty minutes a day and post one blog a week.” That small daily investment created a wealth of content and regular feedback. I didn’t care how many pages I completed. I didn’t even care if the weekly post was good. I was playing a different game.

I accumulated wins if I completed my daily twenty minutes and posted anything each week. One year later, I had enough content for the book. The year after that, it was edited and ready to publish—all because I made winning easy.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But it was built one day at a time. Every big task breaks down into small chunks of time and concrete actions you can take to move forward. It is only through these small chunks that we complete meaningful work.

You don’t build a building. You lay a brick.

You don’t write a book. You type a sentence.

You don’t gain muscle. You lift a weight.

You don’t find love. You share a moment.

Focusing on the small helps us achieve the big.

The key to making progress on massive goals is to break them up into bite-sized chunks and reward yourself for each step along the way.

For most tasks, the day-to-day things you do are not rewarding. Working on game design is a lot of manipulating spreadsheets and building prototypes that don’t work. Getting in shape involves pushing yourself at the gym and cutting back on delicious snacks (mmm…doughnuts).

Results don’t come quickly, and progress is inconsistent. I had a week where I deleted more than I wrote. I’ve spent days dieting only to see the scale move in the wrong direction. This is demoralizing.

To fight back, I rewarded myself for putting in the time, not getting a specific result.

If we don’t have a system for rewarding small wins, we quit.

Achieving small wins doesn’t just advance your goals; it also boosts your mood. Each win releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. This creates a positive feedback loop, motivating you to achieve the next small win. These wins compound. Small victories become the scaffolding supporting more ambitious goals.

Game designers have leveraged this principle for a long time, using points, experience, and a trail of virtual breadcrumbs to lead players along the path to victory. It might take hundreds of hours to reach max level in an online roleplaying game, but great games shower you with gold, gear, and goodies along the path. The longer the quest, the more motivating rewards you receive with each step. Life doesn’t come with these pre-set progress rewards, so we must craft them ourselves.

We do this with focus blocks.

Focus Blocks

Focused attention is the fundamental unit by which every meaningful goal is accomplished. A focus block is a set period where you block all distractions and focus on just one task. Think of each focus block like laying a brick. Brick by brick, you build a home. Block by block, you chip away at any major task.

By using this system, any project can be broken down into smaller, more manageable blocks and tackled step by step. My twenty minutes of daily focus were enough to write a book in two years. The same technique works for designing a game or building a company. And focus blocks are just as powerful for mundane tasks like cleaning the house, planning a vacation, or doing your taxes.

• Start New Workout Routine > Try a Fifteen-Minute Routine From YouTube

• Learn a New Skill > Start a New Online Course

• Write a Novel > Outline Your First Draft

• File Your Taxes > Gather Your Financial Documents

• Clean the Garage > Sort and Clean One Shelf

• Plan an Event > Create an Event Checklist

A focus block is like a videogame power up where you become immune to damage (distraction) and can thus cruise through otherwise difficult tasks with ease. This technique is the best way I’ve found to make amazing progress on any goal.

Building Your Focus Blocks

The steps to building focus blocks are simple:

• Step 1: Choose Your Task

• Step 2: Block Distractions

• Step 3: Set a Timer

• Step 4: Do the Work

• Step 5: Reward Yourself

• Step 6: Repeat

Now, let’s review each step in detail.

Step 1: Choose Your Task

Select a task you’ve been planning to start or complete. Once you’ve chosen your task, focus intently on it as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world. If you aren’t sure what to do, ask yourself: What immediate, tangible action can I take to advance this project?

If you aren’t sure what to pick, choose the scariest or most exciting thing you’ve been putting off. Imagine you are at the end of the day and you accomplished only one thing. What would you want that thing to be? Do that.

Step 2: Block Distractions

Your next step is to set up an environment that supports focus. Take as many reasonable steps as you can to create a distraction-free environment.

• Set your phone on airplane mode.

• Turn off notifications on your computer.

• Wear noise-canceling headphones.

• Let family and coworkers know not to disturb you unless it’s an emergency.

• Close any communication apps like messenger and email.

• Use apps that block the internet or distracting websites.

Be particularly careful when your task requires you to search the internet or check your inbox. It is easy to get caught in rabbit holes and get off track once you shift focus to online activities. If possible, do any required research before starting your focus block. If something comes up requiring research during your focus block, it is often best to just leave yourself a note and do the research later. If you must use the internet, I suggest using apps like Freedom or RescueTime to block any particularly distracting sites.

Step 3: Set a Timer

Make sure you can see the timer from where you work. A visible timer serves as a subtle reminder to remain focused on your primary task. I suggest setting it for five minutes for your first session. Five minutes may seem short. But that’s the point. Staying focused is hard. We want to minimize our resistance to starting something difficult.

We build momentum by keeping the success target small. Imagine you set a goal to write twenty pages and you only write ten. How will you feel? Most likely you will feel discouraged, guilty, or disappointed. That makes it less likely you will want to move forward. But imagine if your goal were to write two pages and you wrote ten? How would you feel? Most likely accomplished and excited. Even if you only wrote two pages that day, the feeling of winning would motivate you to write more the next day and the next. Building momentum transforms small wins into massive progress.

Just like in a good video game, you only want to increase the difficulty when you’ve mastered the basics. You want your initial goal to be achievable so you can get the small win and motivation to continue.

Step 4: Do the Work

Do the thing you set out to do, and don’t let yourself wander onto anything else. It’s only five minutes. You can do it. If you find you’re getting distracted, don’t blame or judge yourself. Negative self-talk does not help. As soon as you notice you have lost focus, take a deep breath to recenter yourself and get back to work. You will get better with practice and be able to work up to twenty or more minutes eventually.

Step 5: Reward Yourself

When the timer goes off, check a box on a calendar. Keep this visible. Share it with someone. Checking the box and seeing the chain of marks grow is its own reward, but feel free to add an additional reward. Play a game, watch a cat video, or go for a walk if you feel like taking a short break.

Step 6: Repeat

It’s likely you’ll be on a roll five minutes in. If you feel good, keep going. But don’t try to do too much at once. You want to end the session on a positive note so it feels rewarding. Over time, you’ll get a sense of how long a good work session is for you. When in doubt, do less.

The Power of Small Wins

The side-effect of focus blocks is that they change how you see yourself. When I committed to twenty minutes of writing a day, I stopped being “someone who wanted to write a book” and became “a writer.” When I set aside time to train, I wasn’t just “trying to get in shape,” I was “in training.”

Identity is forged through these actions. The focus blocks you build today become the foundation for who you are tomorrow.

In other words, don’t wait for inspiration, the perfect plan, or the mythical free weekend where you’ll “finally have time.” Start small. Choose one task. Block distractions. Set a timer. Do the work. Reward yourself. Repeat.