Security Fuels Focus Under Pressure | Generated by AI

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Question: Why do people tend to have better focus when they have work or business with revenue and feel secure, compared to when they are unemployed and fully dedicated to exams or job hunting, which often leads to poorer results—like many in China who prepare full-time for government civil service exams but still fail and reach their 30s?

Answer:

This observation aligns with psychological and practical patterns seen in high-stakes preparation scenarios.

When people have a stable job or business generating revenue, they experience financial security, which reduces chronic stress and anxiety. Financial worries trigger psychological distress, elevate cortisol levels, impair cognitive functions like concentration, memory, and decision-making, and distract the mind constantly. With basic needs met and a sense of stability, the brain faces fewer background threats, allowing better allocation of mental energy toward focused, high-quality work or study. This creates a positive cycle: security enables deeper focus, which improves performance and reinforces security.

In contrast, full-time exam preparation (especially for extremely competitive tests like China’s civil service exam, known as guokao) often involves no income, reliance on savings or family, and mounting pressure from time passing without progress. This creates intense financial and psychological stress, which paradoxically harms focus and efficiency. The mind becomes preoccupied with fears of failure, future unemployment, social judgment, or resume gaps, leading to fragmented attention, burnout, procrastination, or inefficient “fake work” (e.g., passive rereading without deep processing). The lack of structure from a job can also reduce discipline—without external deadlines or accountability, motivation wanes over long periods.

In China’s context, many young people quit jobs or study full-time after graduation for the civil service exam due to its prestige and job security appeal amid economic uncertainty. However, the exam’s low pass rate (often <1-2% for popular positions), combined with financial/psychological strain from unemployment, leads to repeated failures. Some reach their 30s stuck in this cycle, as prolonged full-time prep without results damages re-entry into the private job market and increases despair.

People with part-time jobs or balanced routines often perform better because the job provides:

In short, security enables true focus, while insecurity (financial + outcome uncertainty) often creates paralysis or low-efficiency effort, even with more total time invested. This explains why “putting in time but not focus” (fake work) is common in full-time prep scenarios.

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