It’s Not Hocus-Pocus, It’s All About Focus
“Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people
don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.”
—Jim Rohn
The entrepreneur’s dilemma.
If you own your own business, or are planning to in the near future, be aware of the Entrepreneur’s Dilemma. (You can also adapt this if you’re in management or any sort of supervisory role.) Here’s the scenario: You have this great idea for selling a new product or providing a unique service. You visualize doing it better than everyone else, and of course you’re going to make lots of money.
Initially, the main purpose of a business is to find new customers and to keep the ones you already have. Second, to make a fair profit. At the start, many small business ventures are undercapitalized. Consequently, the entrepreneur wears several hats, especially in the first year, and puts in long days and nights, with not much time for relaxing. However, it’s an exciting time, putting deals together, meeting potential clients and improving the product line or service.
As a foundation is built, people and systems are put in place to create stability. Gradually the entrepreneur becomes more involved in day-to-day operations and administrative duties. What started out as an exciting venture becomes a daily routine, with much more time spent putting out fires, handling people problems, tax challenges and monthly cash flow.
Does this sound familiar to you? Well, you are not alone. In our combined 109 years of business experience, this is a very common situation. The dilemma is compounded because many entrepreneurs (and managers) are controllers. They find it difficult to let go, to allow other people to carry the load. Delegation is not their strength, and of course they are emotionally attached to their business. After all, they created it, weaned it, and nurtured it. They understand every detail and, in their minds, nobody else can do these important everyday tasks as well as they can.
This is the ultimate Catch-22. There are more opportunities on the horizon, and bigger deals to close, but you can’t get to them because you’re stuck with the day-to-day routine. It’s frustrating. So you think, “Maybe if I work harder and take a time management course, I can handle everything.” This won’t help. Working harder and longer hours will not solve your dilemma. Trust us, we’ve been there more than once. So what is the answer? Here it is in one sentence: You must invest most of your time every week doing what you do best, and let others do what they do best.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Focus on those activities you do brilliantly, and from which you produce extraordinary results. If you don’t, you’ll probably create higher stress levels and ultimate burnout. Not a pleasant picture. Doing what you do best gives you energy, keeps you excited and frees you up to chase those new opportunities. But you’re probably wondering how to handle all that stuff that’s holding you back. You’re right. It won’t just disappear. Later in this chapter, you’ll find out specifically how to deal with those monkeys and get them off your back.
Focus on Your Natural TALENTS
It’s critically important that you understand this. To help you get the picture, let’s take a look at the focused world of rock-and-roll music.
The Rolling Stones are one of the most prolific and enduring rock-and-roll bands in history. To date, their career has spanned almost fifty years. Mick Jagger and his three friends are now well into their sixties and still enjoy performing to sold-out stadiums around the world. You may not like their music, but it’s hard to deny their success.
Let’s go behind the scenes just before their concert begins. . . . The stage is set. It took over two hundred people to build this mammoth structure several stories tall and half the length of a football field. A convoy of more than twenty semi-trailers was required to haul it from the last location. Two private planes jet the key people, including the band, between cities. It’s a huge operation. A world tour pulls in more than $80 million profit, so it’s obviously worth the effort!
A limousine pulls up back of the stage. The four band members step out and wait expectantly for their cue call. They exhibit a hint of nervousness mixed with excitement as seventy-thousand people erupt into a deafening roar when their names are announced. The Stones walk on stage and pick up their instruments. For the next two hours they perform brilliantly, sending their legions of fans home happy and satisfied. After the final encore they wave good-bye, step into the waiting limousine and exit the stadium.
They are masters at applying the habit of Priority Focus. That means they only do the things they are brilliant at—recording and performing on stage—period. Notice this. After the initial planning, they don’t get involved with hauling equipment, figuring out the complex itinerary, setting up the stage or doing the hundreds of other tasks that need to be performed efficiently to make the tour a smooth operation, and ultimately profitable. Other skilled people look after the details. The Stones simply concentrate on what they do best—that is, singing and performing.
There’s a great message here for you, dear reader, and it’s this: When you focus most of your time and energy doing the things you are truly brilliant at, you eventually reap big rewards. This is a fundamental truth. And it’s critical to your future success.
Practice, practice, practice
Let’s take a look at a few other examples. Sports is a good one. Every champion athlete focuses on his or her unique talents and continually refines them to an ever-higher level of performance. No matter which sport you choose, the big winners all have one thing in common. They spend most of their time focusing on their strengths, the things they are naturally good at. Very little time is wasted on unproductive activities. And they practice, practice, practice, often several hours every day, honing their skills.
LeBron James, currently the youngest basketball player ever to score 9,000 points in the NBA, has won numerous awards in his professional career. LeBron makes hundreds of jump shots per day, every day—it’s his routine. Barcelona’s soccer star Lionel Messi, currently the best player in the world, practices his dribbling techniques constantly. He’s small in stature but he has perfected his technique so well that you would think the ball was stuck to his feet when he runs. When it comes to scoring goals, he makes the task look easy, often from the slightest of openings. At age twenty-four, he’s won every major club trophy and was voted World Footballer of the Year, three years in a row.
Natural brilliance combined with the daily discipline to constantly hone their skills, is what separates these superstar athletes from everyone else.
Notice how these top performers spend very little time on their weaknesses. Many of our school systems could learn from this. Often, children are told to focus on their weaker subjects and not spend so much time on the ones they do well in. The rationale is to develop a broad level of competency in many subjects instead of focusing on a few. Wrong! As business coach Dan Sullivan says, “If you spend too much time working on your weaknesses, all you end up with is a lot of strong weaknesses!” This doesn’t give you a competitive edge in the marketplace or position you to be wealthy. It just keeps you average. In fact, it’s an absolute insult to your integrity to major in minor things.
It’s important to clearly differentiate your areas of brilliance from your weaknesses. You are probably good at a lot of things, even excellent in some. Others you are competent at, and if you are honest, there are some things you are totally useless at doing. On a scale of one to ten, you could plot your entire range of talents, one being your weakest and ten being your most brilliant. All your biggest rewards in life will come from spending the vast majority of your time in the areas that score a ten on your talent scale.
To clearly define your areas of brilliance, ask yourself a few questions. What do you do effortlessly—without a lot of study or preparation? And what do you do that other people find difficult? They marvel at your ability and can’t come close to matching it. What opportunities exist in today’s marketplace for your areas of brilliance? What could you create using your unique talents?
Discover your brilliance
We are all blessed with a few God-given talents. A big part of your life is discovering what these are, then utilizing and applying them to the best of your ability. Some people never truly grasp what their greatest talents are. Consequently their lives are less fulfilling. These people tend to struggle because they spend most of their time in jobs or businesses not suited to their strengths. It’s like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It doesn’t work, and it causes a lot of stress and frustration. For others, the discovery process takes years before their brilliance is revealed. Gord Wiebe fits right into that category.
In 1977, Gord left a job working in the rail yards of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved west to start a new life. Back then he had not yet discovered his true talents and capabilities.
Fast forward to today. At fifty-eight years of age, Gord is the major shareholder in a national manufacturing business that hit $190 million in revenues last year. How did this dramatic turnaround come about?
First, through the support and opportunity provided by a great mentor, his Uncle Harry, who had been working in the window business for several years. Harry was a passionate entrepreneur and decided to start his own residential window company. At that time, Gord was in his early twenties and describes his training in the business as minimal, but he developed some sales skills and enjoyed traveling around Southern Alberta, meeting people face to face. The company was growing, although the early business plan was based more on “a wing and a prayer.” However, as young Gord discovered, passion drives momentum and momentum creates sales. Also a “customer first” focus built a strong base of happy customers.
The hiring of a progressive and talented vice-president pushed Gord into another steep learning curve that he handled in stride. A passion was now building inside him, wanting this fledgling company to overtake their biggest competitor who had monopolized the window business for years. The battle was on and Gord began to relish the challenges. His true talents were now coming to the fore. More offices were opened, more people were hired, and a new light commercial division was created to supplement their residential business. All Weather Windows (allweatherwindows.com) was now a major player by using innovative technology to stay ahead of the competition.
With the railroad days long behind him, Gord Wiebe says three core values have contributed most to his success.
1. A strong faith in God
2. An ongoing passion for the business
3. A total commitment to stick with it, through all the ups and downs that face every business
With more than one thousand people on the team and offices from coast to coast, hiring the right people became another important strategy. “The first indicator we look for when hiring is: Does this person demonstrate a passion for what they do? You find out pretty quick if someone has passion or not.”
What stokes Gord Wiebe’s passion today, after thirty-four years in the industry, is the exciting prospect of transferring the business on to the next generation. No doubt he is now relishing playing the role of mentor, with the knowledge that a caring uncle had once turned his life around when he needed it most. And in the process, he discovered how to release the talents that were within him all along. All he needed was an opportunity to express them.
Are you aligning your strengths and passions in what you do at work? This is what creates priority focus.
Make it a part of your everyday plan and you’ll experience dramatic jumps in productivity and income. We have a practical method that will make this easy for you and will also clarify your unique talents. It’s called the Priority Focus Workshop, and is outlined on page 59. You need to be absolutely clear about what really goes on during your typical week. This reality check is usually very revealing. Basically, you make a list of all the activities you do at work in a typical week.
Most people, when they add up their total, score between ten and twenty. One of our clients tallied a sixty-nine! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you can’t do sixty-nine things each week and be truly focused. Even twenty activities is far too many. You’ll be scattered all over the place and more prone to interruptions and distractions.
Many people are in shock when they see how much of their week is fragmented. “Overwhelmed,” “out of control” and “stressed out” are typical phrases we hear a lot. However, completing the Priority Focus Workshop at the end of this chapter is a good starting point. At least you’ll know where your time really goes. After completing the workshop, the next step is to list three things you are brilliant at doing in your business. Remember the definition of brilliant? These are activities you do effortlessly, that give you energy, and that produce the greatest results and income for your business.
By the way, if you are not directly involved with income-generating activities, who is? Are they doing a brilliant job of it? If not, you probably need to make some major decisions in the near future. Never forget, revenue comes from sales!
Now here’s the next important question: In a typical week, what percentage of your time do you spend on your brilliant activities? Be totally honest. Often the answer is 15 to 25 percent. Even if 60 to 70 percent of your time is being used profitably, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. What if you could refine this to 80 or 90 percent? Remember, your bottom-line income is directly linked to the amount of time spent in your areas of brilliance.
Use your natural gifts to the fullest.
They are the catalyst for your future success
The next step is to look at your original list of weekly activities and select three things you don’t like doing, resist doing or are just no good at. There’s no shame in admitting you have a few weaknesses. The most common answers here are paperwork, bookkeeping, setting up appointments or doing follow-up calls. All the little details that bring a project to completion are usually found on this list. Of course these need to be done, but not necessarily by you.
Have you noticed how these activities tend to drain your energy instead of expanding it? If this is true for you, wake up! When you keep on doing work that you detest, you need to remind yourself that this is futile. As renowned speaker Rosita Perez said: “When the horse is dead, get off!” Stop flogging yourself. There are better options.
Are You a STARTER or a Finisher?
This is a good time to consider why you like doing certain things and not others. Ask yourself this question: Am I a starter or a finisher? You probably do both to a degree, but what do you do more often? If you are a starter, you enjoy creating new projects, products and ideas that make things work better. The trouble with starters is that they aren’t very good at finishing. All those little details we talked about earlier? That’s boring stuff for starters. Most entrepreneurs are great starters. But after they get the ball rolling they tend to leave it and go on to something new. And what they often leave in their wake is a mess. Other people are then required to clean it all up. They are called finishers. Finishers love taking projects to completion. Often they aren’t good at initiating the project (starters do that best); however, they are great at organizing what needs to be done and ensuring that the details are handled effectively.
So identify yourself. Knowing what your natural tendencies are is really helpful. If you’re a starter, you can release the guilt you have about never getting things finished. Here’s the key:
Find a brilliant finisher to handle the details, and between you a lot more projects will be initiated and completed.
Let’s give you a practical example. This book you’re reading started out as an idea. Getting the book written—outlining the chapters, developing the content and having it all flow properly—is essentially the starter’s job. Each of the three co-authors played an important role in this. However, to produce a finished product—including editing, printing, publishing and establishing distribution channels—required a lot of other people who are great finishers. Without them the original text would be collecting dust somewhere for years. So here’s the next important question for you to consider: Who else could do the tasks you don’t enjoy doing?
For example, if you don’t enjoy doing the books, find an excellent bookkeeper. If you don’t enjoy setting up appointments, have an experienced assistant help you. You don’t like selling, or “motivating” people? Maybe you need a great sales manager who can recruit, train and track results of the sales team every week. If tax time frustrates you, use the services of an outstanding tax specialist.
Now, before you start thinking, “I can’t afford all these people—it will cost too much,” think again. How much time will you free up by effectively delegating the work you don’t like doing in the first place? Either you delegate or you’ll stagnate. You can plan to phase this help in gradually, or consider contracting the work out using part-time services to keep your overhead low.
One of our clients with a thriving home-based business found a unique combination. She hired a woman to come in on Wednesday mornings to do her books. The same person then cleaned her home in the afternoon. She really enjoyed both types of work, always did a great job, and it was cost-effective.
If You’re Feeling SWAMPED,
Get Help!
Learn to let go of the
“stuff” in your life
If you’re in a situation where your business is expanding and your role in the company requires you to focus better, a great way to handle the expanded workload is to hire a personal assistant. If you find the right person, your life will dramatically change for the better, guaranteed. So let’s take a closer look at this key strategy. First, a personal assistant is not a receptionist, secretary or someone whose duties you share with two or three other people. A true personal assistant is someone who is totally dedicated to you. He or she is brilliant at doing the tasks you don’t like to do, or shouldn’t be doing in the first place. The main role of this person is to free you up from all of the mundane jobs and stuff that clutter up your week. Their role is to protect you so that you can focus entirely on your most brilliant activities.
The careful selection of this key person is critical to your future health. Select the right person and your life will become a lot simpler, your stress levels will noticeably diminish and you’ll have a lot more fun. Select the wrong person and you will only compound your current problems.
Here are a few tips: First, make a list of all the tasks you want your assistant to be 100 percent responsible for. Most of these are the activities you want to discard from your own weekly list. When you interview, have the top three applicants complete a personal profile evaluation. There are several good ones on the market. (See Resource Guide, page 343.)
You can have a profile made up of the ideal candidate before you start your selection campaign. Run profiles on your top three interviews and compare these to the ideal candidate profile. Usually the person who is the closest match to your ideal profile will do the best job. Of course, you must take into account other factors, such as attitude, honesty, integrity, previous track record and so on.
Be careful not to select someone just like you. Remember, you want this person to complement your skills. Hiring someone with the same likes and dislikes as yourself will probably create a bigger mess.
A couple of other points worth noting: If you are a controller, someone who won’t let go of things easily, it is essential that you surrender to your personal assistant! Before you panic about the word surrender, take a closer look. Controllers typically have a mind-set that says nobody can do these things as well as they can. That may be true. However, what if your assistant could do these tasks 75 percent as well initially? With proper training and good communication every week, your well-chosen assistant will eventually do these activities as well as you, and will outperform you in many of them. So give up the need for total control—it’s holding you back. Gleefully surrender to someone with better organizational ability and a passion for looking after the details.
Just in case you’re still hanging on to the notion that you can do it all, ask yourself, “How much am I worth per hour?” If you have never taken the time to do this, do it now. Check out the chart below.
Hopefully your dollar figure is high. Then why are you running around doing low-income activities? Give them up!
Last comment on personal assistants: It is absolutely imperative that you schedule time each day or at least once a week to discuss your agenda with your personal assistant. Communicate, communicate, communicate! The number-one reason these potentially great relationships fall apart is simply a lack of communication. Make sure your assistant knows what you want to spend your time on.
Also, allow reasonable time for your new “partner” to learn your systems. Indicate the key people you want to spend time with. Set up screening methods with your assistant that protect you from all the potential distractions and interruptions, so you can focus on what you do best. Be open to all input and feedback. Often, your assistant will create better ways to organize your office. Rejoice if this happens—you’ve found a real winner.
Now let’s consider how you can implement the habit of Priority Focus into your personal life, so you have more time to relax with family and friends, or enjoy a particular hobby or sport.
No matter where you live, keeping a home in first-class condition requires maintenance. If you have kids, the problem is magnified three or four times, depending on their age and ability to destroy! Think of all the time spent in a typical week cooking and cleaning, washing up, fixing things, cutting grass, servicing the car, running errands and so on. Have you noticed there’s no end to this? These activities have a habit of being continually recycled. It’s the ongoing stuff of life. Depending on your mood, you enjoy it, put up with it or resent it.
What if you could find a way to minimize it, or even better, eliminate it? How would you feel? Free, more relaxed, able to enjoy more of the things you’d prefer to do? Of course!
What you’re about to read in the next few minutes may require a new way of thinking, a leap of faith to some degree. However, focus on the rewards and benefits instead of the initial cost. They will far outweigh any investment you make. To put it simply, if you want to free up your time—get help. There’s all sorts of good help available. Most of the help you require will be part time. For example, hire someone to do house cleaning once a week, or every other week.
Les:
My wife Fran used to think I was a plumber. If the tap in the kitchen was leaking, she’d ask me to fix it. Two hours later, with the floor flooded, bits of pipe lying everywhere, and the air blue with language unsuitable to print in this book, she realized she was wrong. Now we hire people who know what they are doing and pay them accordingly.
Is there a handyman in your neighborhood who is semi-retired and loves to fix things? Many experienced older people have terrific skills and are looking for little part-time jobs to keep them busy. These activities give them a sense of fulfillment. Usually, money isn’t their primary need.
Make a list of all the things at home that need servicing, fixing or upgrading. You know, all those little jobs that you never seem to get around to because your time is all used up. Release your stress and hire someone.
You’ll be making a contribution so that someone else can continue to use their skills. And you can eliminate hours and hours of frustration trying to do all those fix-up jobs that you’re no good at, and don’t even have the tools for. Maybe you weren’t supposed to be a plumber, electrician, carpenter and all-around handyman.
What about outside the house? Cutting grass, weeding, trimming, watering plants and bushes, raking. Now here’s a great opportunity for you. Check out the neighborhood. Look for an enterprising kid who wants to earn some money so he or she can buy a new bike, videogame or the latest iPod. Contrary to popular opinion, there are lots of young people who work hard and get the job done right. Find one. You are helping them provide value. And don’t be cheap. A job well done deserves fair compensation.
If you are mentally blocking this idea, consider again. Think of all the extra time you’ll have. You could reinvest those valuable hours into your own best money-making activities, or have real time to relax and re-energize with your family and friends. Maybe this new freedom from weekly “stuff” allows you to embark on that hobby you’ve always wanted to pursue, or enjoy more time for sports. And please, do it without feeling guilty. After all, you deserve time off, don’t you?
Remember, you only have so much time every week. Life becomes more enjoyable when you are operating on a highly efficient, low-maintenance schedule. Now if you genuinely enjoy doing some of these tasks around the house (and you need to be totally honest about this), then go ahead. But only if it’s truly relaxing or gives you a feeling of contentment.
The 4-D Solution
It’s vital that you effectively separate so-called urgent tasks from your most important priorities. Putting out fires all day long in your office is, as time management expert Harold Taylor says, “Giving in to the tyranny of the urgent.” That means every time a telephone rings you jump to answer it. When an email shows up on your computer you react to the request immediately, even if it does not require an immediate answer.
Instead, focus on your priorities. Whenever a choice to do or not do something has to be made, use the 4-D Formula to help you prioritize. You have four options to choose from:
1. Dump It
Learn to say “No, I choose not to do this.” Be firm.
2. Delegate It
These are tasks that need to be done, but you are not the person to do them. Hand them over to someone else, with no guilt or regrets. Simply ask, “Who else could do this?”
3. Defer It
These are issues that you do need to work on, but not right away. They can genuinely be deferred. Schedule a specific time at a later date to handle this type of work.
4. Do It
Do it now. Important projects need your attention right away, so get started today. Move forward. Give yourself a reward for completing these projects. Don’t make excuses. Remember, if you don’t take prompt action you’ll end up with all those nasty consequences. Not a good outcome!
The Power of NO
Staying focused requires a measure of daily discipline. That means being more conscious every day of the activities you choose to spend your time on. To avoid drifting away from your focus, ask yourself at regular intervals, “Is what I’m doing right now helping me to achieve my goals?” This takes practice. It also means saying “No” a lot more. There are three areas to examine:
1. Yourself
The biggest battle going on every day is between your own ears. We talk ourselves in and out of situations constantly. Put a stop to this. When that little negative voice in the back of your head demands attention and tries to get to the forefront of your thinking, take a time-out. Give yourself a quick mental pep talk. Focus on the benefits and rewards of sticking to your priorities, and remind yourself of the negative consequences if you don’t.
2. Other People
A variety of other people may attempt to destroy your focus. Sometimes they wander into your office for a chat because you have an open-door policy. Here’s how to fix that—change your policy. Close your door for at least part of the day when you want to be left alone so you can concentrate on your next big project. If that doesn’t work, you might put up a sign that says, “Do Not Disturb. Any Intruders Will Be Fired!”
Mark:
One of the great things I’ve learned to keep me focused is writing down exactly what I want to do. The more clarity you have about what you’re going to do and really commit to, the more focused you become. I think God sends all these other cool, absolutely interesting, tantalizingly relevant distractions into our environment to see if we are really on purpose, what I call passionately on purpose. But you can’t listen to everybody else’s deal and attempt to do it. I spend most of my time saying “no” now, because people have known me as Dr. Yes. I’m saying “no” to more meetings unless they are in alignment with what I am currently focused on doing.
Distinguishing between a real opportunity that’s on purpose for you and a bright, shiny object that’s just a time-waster can be difficult. I decide based on the quality of the results that people have generated before they come to me. In other words, I want to know their track record. What have they achieved? Are they talkers or doers? Do they consistently make things happen? Do they have a big vision? If their track record is weak, then I prefer not to meet with them.
There are lots of very talented young people out there who can help you, too and who will re-energize your business if it’s become a little flat.
3. The telephone
Perhaps the most insidious intrusion of all today is your PDA. Isn’t it amazing how people allow this little piece of hardware to control their day? If you require two hours of uninterrupted time, turn off your iPhone, Blackberry, or whatever your particular preference is. Use your tech aid wisely—obviously there are times when you need to be available. Pre-schedule your appointments just like a doctor—2 pm to 5 pm on Mondays, 9 am to 12 noon on Tuesdays. Then choose the most productive time to make your phone calls, for example, 8 am to 10 am. If you want to enjoy bigger results, there are times when you need to be secluded from the outside world. Give up the habit of automatically reaching for the phone every time it rings. Say “No.” And take charge at home, too.
Our time-management friend Harold Taylor recalls an incident in the days when he was “addicted” to a ringing telephone. This was before cell phones became popular. On arriving home one day he heard the phone ring. In his haste to get there before it stopped, he broke down the screen door, gashing his leg in the process. Undaunted, he hurdled several pieces of furniture in a desperate bid to find out who was calling. Just before the final ring, he lifted the receiver, gasping, and said “Hello?” A demure voice replied, “Do you subscribe to the Globe and Mail?”
Here’s another suggestion: To avoid those telemarketing calls, turn off your home phone at mealtimes. Isn’t that when they call most often? Your family will appreciate the opportunity for some real discussion instead of these annoying intrusions. Don’t allow your better future and your peace of mind to be put on hold through constant interruptions. Consciously stop yourself when you start doing things that are not in your best interest. From now on those wasteful activities are off limits. You don’t go there anymore.
Be aware of old habits that may be pulling you away from your focus.
For example, excessive TV watching. If you’re used to lying on the couch for three hours every night and your only exercise is pushing the remote control, you may want to take a look at that. Some parents understand the consequences of this and limit TV watching for their kids to a few hours on the weekend. Why don’t you do the same for yourself? Here’s a challenge for you. Take a whole week off from watching TV and see how much you can get done. You’ll be amazed.
Jack:
The biggest personal insight I’ve had was understanding why I was so overwhelmed, and that’s because I couldn’t say “no” very well. What was really powerful for me was realizing that everything I didn’t say “no” to but still hadn’t done was creating my clutter. Books I’d promised people I’d read, letters I thought I should answer, etc. I did a visualization where I literally saw myself in my room, and every piece of paper was a pair of eyeballs looking at me pleading, “Please, give me attention.” I realized I can’t give attention to 20,000 requests a year. It’s just not possible.
It’s much better now. I’m not totally out of it, but I realized that I had this huge need to be seen as a nice guy. The fact is, I am a nice guy. I don’t need to prove it to anybody, and I’ve learned how to say “no” to a lot more stuff and have better criteria for making decisions and not over-scheduling myself. I’m taking more time for my family, for myself, my own health, my own fun and my own exercise. There were months when I would never exercise because I’d be up every morning at 5 am and go to bed at 11pm and just be working all day long. Now I exercise every morning for at least an hour.
There are no magic formulas.
We hope you are getting the message that achieving what you want in life does not require magic formulas or secret ingredients. It’s simply focusing on what works versus what doesn’t work. However, many people focus on the wrong things. Those who live from paycheck to paycheck every month have not studied how to acquire financial intelligence. They have focused more on spending instead of acquiring a strong asset base for the future.
Many people are stuck in a job or career they don’t enjoy because they have not focused on developing their areas of brilliance. There’s a similar lack of awareness with health issues. The American Medical Association recently announced that 63 percent of American men and 55 percent of American women greater than twenty-five years of age are overweight. Even more concerning—one third of American adults are obese, meaning that their body mass index (BMI) is thirty or higher. However, children and youth are the main concern, since 12.5 million (17 percent) between the ages of two and nineteen are also obese. Obviously there are a lot of people out there focused on eating too much and exercising too little!
Here’s the point. Carefully study what’s working and what’s not working in your life. What creates your biggest victories? What are you focusing on that’s giving you poor results? This requires clear thinking.
If you want faster results and
less stress, shift your focus.
Insights
We made a strong statement in the original edition of this book that a lack of focus was the number one reason that stops people from getting what they want. Did you notice the same statement remains in this revised edition of The Power of Focus? I hope you get the point! Think about it: When you are pushing forward to hit a specific target, are you more likely to achieve it when your mind, body, spirit and resources are totally focused on the result, or when you are scattered and your attention is split in several directions?
It’s a no brainer, right?
And yet what we find is a high percentage of company leaders—CEOs, entrepreneurs, professionals, managers, and salespeople—who are struggling to stay focused on their top priorities every week. Even though technology has given us better tools to avoid interruptions and distractions, we still languish at lower levels of focus. If you are struggling with this, read this chapter very carefully. More importantly, complete the appropriate Action Steps at the end of the chapter.
If you want more evidence, closely observe people and teams who are consistently successful. Sport provides wonderful examples of focus and discipline. In soccer, the worlds’ most popular game, Manchester United recently became the most successful team in England by winning their nineteenth League Championship title in the 2010–2011 season. Along with all the many other trophies they have won over the years, one characteristic stands out that is wonderfully amplified by their iconic manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.
Now in his seventieth year, “Fergie” still has the same youthful enthusiasm, focus and drive that has served him well at United for the last twenty-five years. He says:
“Every year we have one focus—winning trophies!”
In the next chapter, we’ll show you step by step how to develop what we call unusual clarity. You’ll also learn how to set “big picture” goals. Then we’ll equip you with a unique focusing system to ensure you achieve them. These strategies have worked wonderfully well for us. They will work equally well for you too.
“Focus and follow through now,
or experience the devastating
pain of regret later.”
—Les Hewitt
Action Steps
The Priority Focus Workshop
A practical six-step guide to maximize your time and productivity.
A. List all of the business activities at work that use up your time.
For example: phone calls, meetings, paperwork, projects, sales, follow-up procedures. Subdivide major categories such as phone calls and meetings. Include everything, even the five-minute tasks. Be specific, clear and brief. Use additional paper if you have more than ten.
1. 6.
2. 7.
3. 8.
4. 9.
5. 10.
B. Describe three things that you are brilliant at doing at work.
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C. Name the three most important activities that produce income for your business.
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2.
3.
D. Name the three most important activities that you don’t like to do, or are weak at doing.
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2.
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E. Who could do these for you?
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F. What one time-consuming activity are you going to say “No” to or delegate right away?
Take time to reflect on your answers to these questions. Then make a few practical decisions that will free up more time to do what you do best.
