Your Time Needs Some Tunnel Vision

Your Time Needs Some Tunnel Vision

Mar 31, 2010
entrepreneur

The only way you’re going to launch that idea, that business, that website is to create a tunnel vision focus and get it done.

Today the noise and  distractions that surrounds us are overwhelming.  Twenty four hour news, instant updates, tweets, friends, phones and everything else are all fighting for your attention.  Unfortunately for most people those distractions are succeeding at pulling you away from what needs to be done.

If you think the distractions are bad for you, they are even worse for businesses.  Many companies fail to have tunnel vision when it comes to launching products and services. Of course you’ll here the argument that keeping an open mind, listening to the masses and constantly changing are all important characteristics of a successful company.

Certainly those are successful traits, however the ability to block all things around you, all distractions and noise and apply a tunnel vision like focus to the problem is the difference between a company headed in the right direction and a company headed in too many directions

Many of the arguments Jason Friend makes in his book Rework require companies to have tunnel vision.  Things like putting less instead of more features into products, not focusing on the competitions business but instead your own, and proper time management all require tunnel vision.

What are the things that keep you from achieving your goals?  What are the distractions that eat away at your time?

You need to practice some tunnel vision on your highway to success.

photo credit

  • http://www.theskooloflife.com/ Srinivas Rao

    Hey Rich,

    These are all great points. As somebody with ADHD, this is really relevant for me. I get focused in spurts of 2 hours at a time, but when they hit, I get more done than an average person does in 8 hours. As far as companies go, I think you make a great point that they have too many priorities. We thought of close to a dozen ideas for content concepts for BlogcastFM such as weekly panels, video based stuff, but in the end we said let's focus on what we're good at, interviews. That bet has been a smart one and allowed us to be consistent in terms of what we're doing. Love your insights as always.

  • http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

    Less is better when making products…I've learned that by trying to do too much and missing a launch.

  • http://www.RichLazzara.com/ Rich Lazzara

    Srini, thanks for the comments. Keep up the good work.

  • http://www.RichLazzara.com/ Rich Lazzara

    true. the key is know what less entails. i think thats the hard part. its a fine line between offering less to the point of nothing compelling vs offering less because its enough. However in the end something is better than nothing. thanks for the comments.