Andrew from Wordpost made an interesting comment to me the other day after my post about being passionate.
“I’m passionate about a number of things, probably too many. I just need to focus!”
It’s funny because if I had to list the most important trait to being a successful entrepreneur it would be focus. In fact when asked in this interview (min 13:40) what the most important characteristic was I nearly cut off the interviewer and said “focus”. It’s so important to me that the salutation in my email newsletter says “Stay Focused”.
Why Your Focus Is Important
Whether it’s Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Seth Godin or you, each equally shares one common asset…time! From day to day we each have equal amounts of it. Sure each of us is on this earth for different amounts of time but from day to day we all have 24hours. How we use those 24 hours can determine why many succeed while others fail.
Your ability to focus and more importantly stay focused for long periods of time will determine your fate. If you look at any successful entrepreneur you will find someone who has been focused and not only focused but more times than not, narrowly focused.
Apple is the poster child of companies that are focused with laser like precision. Sometimes seemingly to a fault. How many people would release a phone into the market without such basics as MMS? That’s because Apple is focused on delivering the most superior and simplest user experience, even at the expense of sacrificing basic features. Apples limiting of design ideas had an averse affect on their success.
But that’s a company, what about you?
The Secret To Staying Focused
Counter to what most of us would think limitations lead to success. You need to limit your opportunities and focus on a few ideas. For most of us we have dozen of things happening and even more ideas on things that could be happening. Being able to determine what to focus on comes from trial and error. You need to limit your selection of ideas, put restraints on your possibilities. Only when you add restraints and narrow the ideas will you be able to move forward. Once you’ve narrowed down your idea let’s look at sustaining focus on that idea.
The most important thing you have to do is have a plan. Sounds so simple, but for most it’s not. Take the time to sit down and write it out. Don’t just think about things, write them down. One method that works is to write down ten things that would be most beneficial for you to achieve in the next six months in order to reach your goals. Then from that list of ten pick the one item that would have the most impact. Now over the next 30 days do not do anything else but focus on achieving that one thing. Once you get the feeling of achieving things you can start to take on more items, perhaps its the next two or three items off the list achieved in another 30 day time frame and so on.
Having a plan is so very crucial that to proceed without one is a sure recipe for neglecting any progress on your ideas.
For many of us the ideas we have come in such waves that we end up drowning in them. We become paralyzed because there are so many things we want to do. This is where the narrowing the ideas down comes into play however don’t procrastinate on this step. Many allow indecision to crowd out their focus and thus become a permanent decision to do nothing. Get past that, make a plan, execute the pan and stay focused.
I’d love to hear what you think on ways to stay focused? Leave a comment below.
