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The Ultimate Productivity Characteristic is Focus
Focus is about saying no.
Anyone can say no to bad ideas, but only a focused person will say no to good ideas.
Focus is something that people consistently bring up as a key to success. When Warren Buffett was asked the key to his success, he simply replied, “Focus.” Bill Gates had the same reply. And Jonny Ive, mentioned it was the biggest lesson he learned from Steve Jobs:
This sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this, and it’s a struggle to practice, but is this issue of focus.
Jobs was one the most focused people in the world. While focus doesn’t ensure you will be victorious, not being focused virtually ensures defeat.
The most misunderstood thing about focus is that it’s not a light switch that you can simply turn on and off when you want to. It’s more like a muscle that you have to practice every day.
Focus is not the sort of thing you aspire to … or you decide on Monday. It’s something you do every minute.
Since not doing something always gives you more time than doing something, Jobs would often test people, asking them, “How many things have you said no to?” or “What have you said no to?”
People often tried to make things up, but Jobs would see right through them. This is a lesson Ive learned:
I would have these sacrificial things, because I wanted to be very honest about it. And so I’d say, “Well, I said no to this and no to that.” But he knew that I wasn’t vaguely interested in doing those things anyway, so there was no real sacrifice.What focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.
A world with abundant opportunities encourages poverty of commitment. And without commitment, you can’t have focus. Without focus, your energy gets diffused, and it impact is reduced.
Filtering with Focus
People and organizations tend to lose focus. It’s entropy.
Staying focused requires a lot of effort and discipline. One clue outstanding people leave is that they tend to commit and focus on something for an abnormally long period, even if the results are not immediately visible. Jobs was fired. Gates slept at the office for a decade. Few had heard of Warren Buffett until the 1980s, nearly 30 years after he started. Imagine working 30 years on the same thing.
The only people you should hire are focused ones. The only competitors you should worry about are the focused ones.
People naturally lose focus when they forget that focus means saying no to good opportunities and good people. Average ideas are everywhere, and they try to pull you in. The more successful you are, the more people want to work with you.
If you start saying yes to average ideas, you quickly lose the space and time you need to execute on the great ones.
Focus is hard, and because it’s hard, it also creates a hidden place to find opportunities.
Finding Ideas
The focus of others creates opportunities. Since focus requires saying no, it also means that really smart people and strong competitors are saying no to really good ideas.
If you’re trying to find your way in an organization, it’s worth thinking about the most focused people around you and asking them about the best idea they’re not working on. While they might not say it directly, they’ll leave clues a curious person will find.
If you’re a company, it’s worth thinking about what your strongest competition is not doing. You can often figure this out by interviewing smart people from the competition.
Energy into Results
The people and organizations moving the fastest are the focused ones.
Not only do they focus on a few ideas, but within the scope of those ideas, they relentlessly focus on the key variables. Identifying the variables that matter comes with focus. When you commit to living with a problem, you understand things about it that the casual observer misses.
Focus converts energy into results. Why spend time on your 5th most important idea? All of the energy that goes toward anything that is not the most important thing comes at the expense of the most important thing.
Narrow the focus. Raise the standard. And set yourself apart.