Focus on

To focus on something is to dedicate time and attention to a specific project

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Focus on

To “focus on” something is to give special attention to one thing. When you focus on something, you narrow your effort . You give special attention to a specific subject or area.

You might start a meeting and say, “In this meeting, we’ll focus on the results of our last customer satisfaction survey .” You might be with a wide variety of people. You might have a lot of things you could talk about with them.

But if you say, “We’ll focus on the results of the customer survey,” you mean to say that you will be giving special attention to that topic—the survey—and you won’t use the meeting to talk about other things.

So when you use “focus on,” you’re talking about what will get your attention…but you’re also excluding the things that will not get your attention.

If you have kids and they keep calling you during the workday , you can tell them: “I love you. But I need to focus on work for the next few hours.” That means, you need to give your attention to work. And it implies that you can’t give your attention to personal matters just then.

But the tables might turn later in the day. If you’re having dinner with your family and someone from work texts you, you might respond, “I can’t focus on work right now. I’m with my family.”

Imagine you buy a beautiful old house, but it needs a lot of renovations inside. Your budget not to mention your time—they’re not unlimited . You can’t do everything at once . So you might suggest to your spouse , “Let’s focus on the kitchen for now.” That means, you’re going to give your time, money, and attention to the kitchen; you’re not going to worry about the bathrooms and the bedrooms right away .

So you can see how “focus on” means giving specific attention to one thing, one subject, and not giving your attention to all the other things that are competing for your attention .

Sometimes you can use “focus on” to set a limit on a statement , to make sure your listener understands the scope of what you’re talking about.

The east coast of the United States is really long…fourteen states have shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean. Another three states are pretty close . But when people say “the east coast,” they often mean the northeast , between Washington and Boston. Not always! But often. So when I told you about the culture on the east coast, I said upfront , I’m going to focus on the area between Washington and Boston.

So I could have talked about North Carolina, I could have talked about Florida, I could have talked about Maine: all those states have shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean. But I said, I’m going to focus on the area between Washington and Boston. That set a limit on what I was going to talk about.

There’s a new documentary called “Einstein and the Bomb.” If you liked the movie “Oppenheimer,” you might want to put this documentary on your list. The documentary focuses on Einstein’s connection to the development of nuclear weapons .

This limits the scope of the topic. It’s not a documentary about Einstein’s full life. It’s not even about Einstein’s full body of work . It’s not about the development of nuclear weapons. It’s about something narrower than that. The documentary focuses on Einstein’s connection to the development of nuclear weapons.

So in this case, “focuses on” narrows the scope. It says what it includes , what it talks about, what it gives attention to. And “focuses on” tells you that it only talks about those things, not about other things.

See you next time!

All right, that’s all for this first summer edition of Plain English, summer 2024. On Thursday, we’ll talk about west coast living. And later on this summer, we’ll talk about the Midwest and the south, and some other regions.

Remember this was lesson number 688, so the full lesson is at PlainEnglish.com/688, thanks to JR.

See you back here on Thursday.

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Story: Lesson