Have you ever noticed that if you're looking to buy a certain car, how you suddenly notice how many they are on the roads, and they seem to be popping up everywhere? Equally, when you focus on a project that's been hanging over your head and you've been procrastinating and when you finally settle down and really start working at it, how the focus you suddenly bring to the project brings you answers and ideas and it no longer seems as big or as impossible a task as you first thought. 

I would say focus is the biggest factor in determining a person's success. There are so many distractions in the world that it is sometimes very difficult to focus on the one thing that is gonna help you be successful. I too have suffered from this, where I have too many projects on the go and therefore the focus is too diversified. The bottom line is none of them turn out as well as the one that I maybe put more focus into. The trick, however, that I'm still learning is to have less projects and to focus on them one at a time and not grasshopper from one to the other. This is a constant struggle for me and from hard earned personal experience, I know how difficult this is, because things come up all the time and often there are opportunities where I think - wow this could be cool and if I can I just juggle this and that I can help a lot here and this opportunity could be great fun. Everything we take on will diminish something else, so learning to prioritise and what to say NO to is so valuable because time is finite each day and we always think we can fit more in than is actually possible.

Focus is our number one commodity, and we need to treat it with the respect that it deserves and understand how powerful it is when we fully focus on one thing at a time. People who are laser focused on the objective that they are trying to achieve and stick to it until completed or work to master their talents have the inside track. We are human but seldom deviating too far an objective is an advantage. 

I’m working on a two-pronged approach which is to separate long-term objectives from daily tasks. I’m much better at keeping long term goals in mind and working towards these, far less good at starting and completing individual smaller tasks without either being distracted away by messages coming in or suddenly thinking of something else I need to do and rather than making a note, I can stop what I’m working on and go do that instead. This hurts my productivity because getting back my train of thought when I get back to the original task is not so easy and can take a bit of time to refresh myself on what needs to be done – effectively double work. 

The other thing that hurts my day and week is when I fail to plan the priorities and when I will do them. The day or week becomes way more reactive, and things slip through the net which annoys me because I know this situation is avoidable. Bad planning affects focus more than anything because it lays us open to distractions, the panic of forgetting something and days we feel have largely been wasted on everything but what really matters.

I urge you to not make the excuses I made to myself for years that I hate routine and that spontaneity will be lost or the classic I don’t have time to plan in detail. Whilst I’m not amazing at this yet, having improved dramatically I can honestly say that preparation has become a real pleasure and helps my life run so much better and I’m still able to put people first and have more fun because less things hang over my head because I know I have either done them well or when I will do them. Unplanned stuff is what wakes me some nights!

Focus – a cliché thrown around like confetti but don’t be fooled this is one cliché that truly improves your life. Improving you focus means you are improving your greatest power!

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