Tag: focus

Focus is the key to progress, not balance

“To make progress, you must be FOCUSED, NOT BALANCED.” ⁃ Robert Kiyosaki

You can make a little progress while loving a balanced life, but to make the biggest gains, you have to focus an inordinate amount of attention on one specific goal or task. When you focus on one thing, you’ll be amazed at the strides you can make.

There is no such thing as a perfectly balanced life. Our lives are more like waves in the ocean, going back and forth. Sometimes we have a big project with a deadline to meet, so we have to put our energy in that, while other times we have the ability to focus more on our family, our health, etc.

We can try to be perfectly balanced, but will most likely frustrate you as you aim for the impossible. Instead, spend time in great focus on one aspect of life while maintaining other aspects, then ebb and flow to the next major category.

Common reasons why goals aren’t achieved

Why goals aren’t achieved?

1. Not enough focused time spent in action.

2. Give up after it doesn’t work once (instead of staying consistent and persistent).

3. Lacking discipline to do what is necessary.

4. Being easily discouraged after setbacks or slower progress than expected.

Finding Success

How do you find success? Figure out what it is that most people know they should be doing, then do it.

For example, how do you get a six pack or get into the best shape of your life? You eat well and exercise regularly. But in order to really stand out from everyone else, you have to do what very few people are willing to do. The same can be said for anything in business as well. That which is difficult often does not have many people do it. Or people are willing to do it for a short period of time but don’t stick with it.

Hard work performed with focus, integrity, and perseverance will take you a long way. The more specific you are, the better results you will see. Focus completely on mastering one or two things first before trying to do everything. Otherwise you are more likely to be mediocre at everything you’re trying.

Praise the effort

We tend to simplify things in our heads, wanting to take whatever is the easiest route. We do this in many things, including looking at results. But what should be focused on instead is the effort the individual is giving to get the results.

There are two problems when only focusing on the end result…

First, if we only focus on the end result, maybe we aren’t challenging ourselves enough. For example, I should almost always win when facing an elementary student in basketball – and I’m not even good at basketball. But when you lower your standards just so you can win, it defeats the purpose of playing the game. At that point, why measure anything at all?

Second, when we focus on results only, we remove the element of luck from our environment. Annie Duke talks about this in her book Thinking in Bets. I can play a hand of poker perfectly according to the probability of what gives me the best chance at success and still lose the hand. Or, vice versa, I can play a hand incorrectly and still win. But if we’re only looking at the result, that may alter our way of thinking and cause us to play according to our emotions instead of what is mathematically the most likely way to win. It’s important to remember that we can only control our actions, not the actions of others, our environment, or “luck.”

So instead of focusing on results, the real question should be: “What did you do to maximize your potential?” It’s ok to ask our children if they won the game, got an A on the test, etc., but make sure we don’t praise the result. We need to focus all of our attention/praise on their efforts. What work did they put in to achieve those results? Did they try their best? (And remember, more is not always better. So if they were “studying” all night before a test and didn’t do well, maybe it would be better to have a shorter timeframe to study intensely and then get a good night of sleep.)

The key to greatness

To be great, you have to be consistent. ​
To be great, you have to be consistent.

To be great, you have to be consistent. You have to be disciplined. You may have natural talent/ability, but without nurturing it and growing it through consistent effort, you will never achieve true greatness.

Do you think LeBron James or Michael Jordan were born with gifts that you and I don’t have? Yes. That’s how the world works. Everyone is different. But they also worked tirelessly for years on end, spent millions of dollars investing in their bodies to help strengthen them, honed their craft with hours in the gym, etc. They had natural ability, but so do a lot of other guys in the NBA. It was their consistent, focused effort over many years that helped them become the greatest of all time.

While it is easy to think of sports as the best analogy here, it applies to everything we do in life. Want to be better at your job? What actions are you taking daily to train to become the best? Do you role play scenarios with other team members? Do you take continuing education classes? Do you read about specific subjects to help you or watch “how to” videos?

You don’t improve the most by going to a weeklong seminar once per year and then not doing anything else until next year’s seminar. You improve the most by taking small, focused actions every single day, always building upon the previous day.

What actions are you willing to take to achieve greatness – not today, and not tomorrow, but five, ten, or twenty years from now? Are you able to look at the big picture and base your decisions on that instead of what feels good today? Do you have the discipline to repeat the monotonous actions (slightly/slowly improving over time)? If you want to be mediocre, that’s fine. You can live a good life coasting through it. But if you want to achieve greatness, you have to endure many unheroic days to reach some heroic decades in the future…