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In today’s world of never-ending busyness and hundreds of tasks to do, failure due to a lack of focus is one of the most common reasons why people can’t achieve their goals. In fact, I believe this problem is the biggest hurdle for accomplishment, and that’s why I wrote an entire book about it, The Ultimate Focus Strategy: How to Set the Right Goals, Develop Powerful Focus, Stick to the Process, and Achieve Success.
The fundamental rule of the Ultimate Focus Strategy is that the more goals you have, the less likely you are to achieve them. I strongly recommend limiting your objectives to no more than three, and ideally just one or two, that you’ll be working on every day, or as often as you can. Working on numerous goals in different walks of life at once means inevitably neglecting some of them.
At one point, I practiced five different sports — bodybuilding, rock climbing, krav maga, tennis, and swimming. I also took frequent walks and went on bike rides. Needless to say, I couldn’t really focus properly on any of those activities and progress quickly.
I had to quit bodybuilding, tennis, and swimming — sports that I had been failing at anyway and didn’t enjoy as much — so I could improve quickly in rock climbing and krav maga — sports that I find more entertaining and challenging. If it hadn’t been for quitting those sports, I know I would have continued to fail. My performance would have been heavily affected by a lack of focus.
In my book, I cover in great detail how to focus on the right goals in the long term, but for a quick summary, here are the basic guidelines that will help you eliminate the risk of failing due to spreading yourself too thin:
1. Sacrifice is necessary. Sacrificing less-important goals will give you more power to work on the most crucial objectives. Prioritize big life improvements like changing your diet, getting a better job, starting a business, or finding a life partner, over less significant objectives.
2. Embrace boredom. It’s exciting to set new goals or follow new strategies, but if you prioritize excitement over effectiveness, you’ll only lose focus and possibly fail. If something works, stick to it.
3. Pare it down. Each time you’re struggling with prioritizing your tasks, consider which task can make other tasks irrelevant or easier, and do that one first. Resist the temptation to procrastinate by first doing the easiest tasks on your to-do list. Instead, find a way to perform a task that will permanently take those less important tasks off your list.
One of the world’s most successful venture capitalists, Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercase Capital and a guest shark on ABC’s reality television show Shark Tank, wrote in his blog post announcing his goodbye to the venture capital world the following paragraph:
“The only way I know to be awesome at startups is to be obsessively focused and pegged to the floor of the deep-end, gasping for air. I succeeded at venture capital because, for years, I rarely thought about or spent time on anything else. Anything less than that unmitigated full commitment leaves me feeling frustrated and ineffective. As you’ve heard me say on the show, if I’m not all-in, I’m out.”[18]
If you’re working on a particularly challenging goal, the “all-in or out” approach might be the only way forward, and it certainly won’t hurt if you decide to follow this philosophy at least partly and greatly limit your focus.
EXERCISE #5: FOCUS TO THE EXTREME
It’s incredible how much you can achieve if you focus on one key goal and disregard everything else. While most people will find it impossible to have a single focus in life — there are always many obligations to attend to — try to set aside a weekend or perhaps even an entire week, during which you’ll only work on one key goal.
Successful entrepreneur Craig Ballantyne suggests in his article, “You Have Never Thought This Way Before” that if you want to finish your product and start a business, “Book a hotel conference room if you must. Pay the money upfront so you won’t back out. Arrive there early and lock yourself in and don’t come out until you have a product to
You can use this strategy to finish a long overdue project, write your first short book, publish an important blog post or article, memorize key words and phrases in a foreign language, or complete virtually every other goal you can work on in a hotel room.
If you’re working on other goals like lowering your highly-elevated cholesterol levels, spend the entire weekend or week paying extremely close attention to your diet by noting down every single piece of food you put in your mouth. Read a couple of books about the dangers of elevated cholesterol levels. Religiously stick to the recommended workout schedule.
The point is to become as immersed in your goal as possible. Even if you can’t maintain a given routine in the long term, you’ll still benefit from this short-term exercise to remind you of the power that lies inside you if you double down on what’s most important to you.
1. The third common type of failure is caused by a lack of focus. Whenever you spread your attention over too many different goals, you’ll hinder your performance. This will likely lead to rapid failure because it’s impossible to reach key goals without sacrificing less significant objectives.
2. To avoid this type of failure, make sure to prioritize big goals and dedicate most of your energy to them. Realize that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Limiting your focus is necessary for success.
3. Embrace boredom and stick to the things that are working well for you, even if they’re no longer as exciting as they were in the beginning.
4. Lastly, focus on the essence of the goal you want to reach. Oftentimes you can pinpoint just one key action that will make every other action easier or unnecessary. Do this action to gain more clarity and focus.
