Focus

One of the best pieces of advice I can give my students is this: read books (and make sure at least 25% of them are non-fiction). There are many reasons, but the most important is that reading trains your attention span. It builds the ability to stay with a word, a sentence, a page. And with it come all the side benefits: sharper comprehension, greater vocabulary, and more exposure to how others communicate.

The capacity to focus for long stretches of time (20 to 90 minutes) is essential to developing mastery in any discipline. For the sake of lengthening attention span, all practices that demand undivided focus qualify. Think of a martial artist practicing a single movement for an hour without pause. A meditation practice such as zazen(just sitting) attempts to drop all action. What's left? Pure attention; pure awareness; pure consciousness. It's essentially doing nothing but being.

Now, consider this: what does doing nothing mean? Nothing doesn't exist.

So if you can master doing nothing, you’ve already learned how to master everything.

Single-pointed focus of being is the key.