The Funnel of Focus

Your ability to focus is independent of the clutter, chaos, and drama of your day. Some days, focus works for you and supports performance. Other days, it feels scattered, counterproductive, and draining.

Consider the athlete operating in a world full of chaos and distraction, still trying to perform at a high level. Regardless of the sport, as an athlete approaches execution, there are several phases at work. When chaos takes over, athletes often fall victim to what I call the Inverse Funnel Effect.

Instead of focus narrowing toward an external target, it turns inward. The mind shifts away from execution and toward survival.

Where Focus Is Strongest

Once awareness shifts into protection, it impacts the next phase: Strategy. Strategy should be about intent and purpose. It’s how you choose to execute your plan. But when awareness is defensive, strategy becomes reactive. Instead of playing to strengths, athletes begin playing to avoid mistakes.

This is why it becomes so difficult to commit to a plan during chaos. A protective mindset makes aggressive, purposeful strategy feel risky. Many athletes spend far too much time competing in this mode.

As the funnel inverts, focus widens as execution approaches. The athlete starts searching for fixes, scanning mechanics, and overanalyzing internal processes. This is why trying harder to be mechanical often makes things worse. Freedom returns only when mechanical control is released.

An inverted funnel leads to desperation, lost confidence, and internal overload. You can often see it on an athlete’s face. They look frustrated, detached, or even apathetic. In reality, they care deeply. They’re just working harder to protect themselves from disappointment than to execute freely.

The Proper Funnel of Focus

When the funnel is upright, focus flows from wide to narrow—moving from Awareness through Strategy to Execution. Each moment resets the funnel. Awareness works best when it allows thoughts, emotions, and external noise to pass without attachment. Thoughts themselves are harmless until meaning is assigned to them.

Think of thoughts as test balloons. Under stress, they often center around fear and doubt. Awareness doesn’t eliminate them. It allows them to move through without grabbing hold. Acceptance is the engine that keeps awareness effective. Without acceptance, awareness turns into vigilance. Vigilance fuels fight-or-flight. Acceptance allows the funnel to stay upright.

Acceptance doesn’t mean liking the situation. It means trusting that you can handle it.

Moving Into Strategy

From acceptance-based awareness comes strategy. No longer about preventing outcomes, strategy becomes about intent.

A simple question helps here: What do I want to do?

That question naturally leads to visualization. Visualization bridges planning and execution by engaging the mind with purpose rather than mechanics. You visualize the desired outcome or feeling, not the internal movements that create it.

Visualization is a skill that must be practiced long before pressure shows up. In competition, it becomes active engagement. Seeing the shot. Seeing the target. Feeling the intention. When visualization stays external, the funnel remains upright.

Execution

Execution is simple. You’re either committed or you’re not. When awareness is accepting, strategy is intentional, and visualization is clear, execution becomes decisive. This is where freedom lives.

Too many athletes rely on focus only when it happens naturally. Chaos, doubt, fear, and pressure don’t resolve themselves. Focus must be trained to work through them.

The storms don’t stop. The work is learning how to focus through them.