How Do You Focus?
Focus is a challenge for everyone, entrepreneur, employee and goldfish alike. Every entrepreneur that I have ever met is filled with ideas. Some are brilliant ideas about how to improve their business or make business more profitable. Some are completely new ideas for businesses or products or even services that they could offer. Their mind will wander for a moment in some meeting and they will discover a problem, define a solution and explore in their mind the huge opportunity they have stumbled upon.
Maybe they’ll jot some notes, maybe they will go back to paying attention to whatever activity they are a part of. That alone will not stop all of these ideas coming to their heads.
The challenge comes when they attempt to implement some of these ideas. It often occurs all at once. Or when a portion of a business is not doing great they jump into yet another scheme.
This is the rabbit hole that all entrepreneurs must be aware of.
Not all ideas can be this challenging, but a great many can lead to a lot of busy work with little to show for it but some half built (if that) ideas.
Let me give you an example. Right now I have ideas for:
A flower shop
A laundromat
A car wash
A dog accessory
A restaurant
About a dozen books
A few apps
A few simple inventions
Other trainings
A few websites
Real estate ideas
Breakfast (I really like breakfast)
More ideas will come up during breakfast
I cannot make a move on most of these ideas. I feel that all of them would be phenomenally successful. How many people wish they could have a team like Thomas Edison that would implement their ideas? How cool would that be?
You: “Hey, I have this crazy idea for a flower shop. Here are the details. Here’s some cash. Make it work.”
Your team: “OK.”
That’s magical. Unfortunately you and I really don’t have a team like that setup. And we only have 24 hours in a day. Which means that we need to focus our energy on a limited number of ideas.
Focus is power. Gary Keller in his book, The One Thing claims we need to focus on one thing. This is hard to argue. After reading biographies of Warren Buffett, Michael Jordan, Elon Musk, Madonna, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Ronda Rousey, Jack Welch, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Armstrong, Bruce Lee and many other successful people I found a few common traits. One of those traits was a laser like focus on what they wanted to achieve at any given time in their life. Often this focus lead to the demise of many relationships. But in almost every case, the power of focus almost guaranteed success. As long as you consider the success in the one particular area that was focused on. In order to say a focused yes to something, you must say no to virtually everything else.
The challenge comes not only in focusing on your business in the here and now, but also in balancing life, work and play so you can actually enjoy the life you have built. All of this means you need to systematize your time as well as learn to say no to many people, including yourself.
I tell clients to focus on one major thing, allowing only extremely minor deviations on a limited number of projects to keep their mind diverse. After they decide what to focus on I have them setup if-then scenarios to be rewarded by being able to deviate for a bit on another project.
For example, I have a client that is focusing tirelessly on building her business to five employees. She knows that at five employees she will bring in enough income to allow her some freedom. With this freedom she has a new venture she wants to build that complements her existing business. She knows that if (and when) her focus achieves this goal, then she can work on the next project.
If she were to focus on both her existing business and the other venture, she would dilute her focus and not be able to give much to either venture. The existing business would grow slower and the new venture may not take off at all. Would she still be “busy”? Extremely. And with little growth to show for it.
I like to use the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He started with bodybuilding, knowing he was going to move from Austria to America. He conquered bodybuilding and built it as a sport up to a level it had never seen before. Then moved to movies. He opened up an entire genre of movie. Then he moved to politics. He didn’t work to become a mayor, he focused on becoming a governor. In between he peppered his life with businesses and real estate projects but those were not his main focus. Also note that he did not decide to do it all in one day. It took years. He built upon each success.
More importantly, he did this while many people said he was crazy and would never be successful.
Even more importantly is that he enjoyed the process.
But you want to know how to focus, not a bunch of reasons why, right?
Here are the 12 Steps on How to Focus:
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List all that you want to focus on.
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Create criteria to judge them by. For example, I typically use a) Current profitability, b) Current enjoyment and c) Growth potential.
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Add other metrics as you see fit.
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Label them on a scale of 1-5 each.
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Pick one based on the criteria that you like best and RUN with it.
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Ignore the rest.
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Pick some metrics to create your If/Then scenario. This can be a date, dollar amount, number of clients/employees/sales/etc. The idea is to attach a goal to what you want to focus on.
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Create another If/Then metric as a failsafe. For example, If you have not achieved X by this date, Then you will close this project and choose another.
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Label the next project as your reward for achieving goals from step 6.
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Schedule in your calendar exactly what you will work on at what times to maintain your focus.
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DO NOT deviate from the focus outside of scheduled times. Your brain needs other activities to stay fresh, so schedule them as well. Most good ideas do not show up while you are pushing hard. They come during down times.
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Succeed. If you do not, learn from your mistakes and go back to step 1.
All of this seems basic and easy, right? Implementation is often more difficult than reading a list. I like to add in an accountability partner or two in order to keep me focused.
Ignoring the power of focus will lead you to feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and tired. Understanding and utilizing the power of focus will leave you refreshed, excited and driven.
See the difference?
James Kademan is a Business Coach for Draw In Customers Business Coaching in Madison, Wisconsin as well as the author of The BOLD Business Book. When he isn’t focusing on business, he is busy guiding entrepreneurs to success in business and beyond. He blogs successfully to the world at www.drawincustomers.com. If you are considering hiring a business coach, take a moment to call James at (608)210-2221. Focus on success and it will come to light.
