Thread: Slicing the issue of focus

As someone with a multitude of interests I often find it challenging to stay singularly motivated for one thing. This made me think a lot about focus (which has already spawned some threads about the issue here before). I've been through the process of figuring out what precisely is it that I love to do and I've for three times already confirmed that it is building web sites and more broadly online media about my interests which I have lately been able to tie up to a "grand vision" that employs them all.

Focus seems to be the key aspect to success and so a lot of people advise that a way to succeed is to focus, be single minded about what you're trying to accomplish. But not only is this easier said than done, it's easier said than done because this kind of advice is actually incredible vague and almost useless. Yeah we should focus, but seldom anyone tells us what is actually meant by "focus", very specifically.

I found that focus can be sliced in various ways and that you pretty much have to choose which way you'll take based on what sits right for you. If it doesn't feel natural then something is wrong. Forcing yourself doesn't really seem like a good way towards success. It instead seems like trying to simulate yourself to success rather than BEING yourself.

1. Focus on specific type of work. Examples: "I only do writing for blogs", "I focus on PHP web development", "I strive to be an excellent dentist."

This is where you focus on essentially developing a single specific skill and offering only that skill as a service and nothing else in your business. Excellent for freelancing.

2. Focus on a specific project. Examples: "I focus on building web communities", "I strive to make great documentary movies", "I flip websites", "

All of these examples involve doing something that requires multiple skills to be applied at the same time, one complementing the other. So you must have all of these skills, but not necessarily developed to the max, but only to the extent needed for the project. Strive for excellence is transfered from specific skills to the specific project.

Building web communities can involve web design, web development, communication skills, arbitration skills and other community management skills. Flipping web sites involves pretty much all the skills required to create or improve web sites. Making movies requires editing skills, conceptualization and possibly story writing.

It could be said that this is more about management, but a lot of people who have these kinds of goals start off alone, doing everything themselves so they are "managing" themselves, playing multiple roles in service of their project.

3. Focusing on a vision or building an entire business. Examples: "I want to build a new media business that will help promote this particular set of ideas", "I want to create a successful dental care business.", "This is what I want the world to be. I want to contribute as much as possible to changing the world in this direction, and make a living off of it."

This is where you're looking at the big picture. Projects become "products", merely components in a larger machine. A media business can have multiple "programs" or web sites about multiple mutually relevant topics or issues. A dental care business offers multiple dental care services. And perhaps most broad of all, if you have a very well defined vision of a changed world, anything you ever do, services or projects, is in service of that vision.

Ok so what's the problem with typical focus advice?

The problem is that nobody seems to define what they mean and so it can be interpreted as either of the above leading the one taking advice (like me) towards insecurity. I ask myself: "Ok, so if they mean I need to focus on a specific skill yet I really want to focus on this particular project or even this particular vision, I'm doing it wrong?"

I think the answer is no. You can focus in different ways. I think focus really isn't about being narrow at all where the more you cut out the better. That way of defining it leaves people like me in utter desperation because it seems impossible for us to do it without feeling like we're working against our selves and our other talents and vision.

Instead focus seems to be nothing more than a metaphorical grapple. Imagine Batman shooting a grapple gun to a particular place where he wants to go and pulling himself up. That's what focus is. It doesn't matter WHAT the grapple location is and how is and what elements describe it, you are the one defining absolutely every element of "The Place" you want to end up in and once you decide this is where you wanna go you're basically shooting a grapple gun and establishing a string (or strings) between where you are and where you wanna go.

That string then serves to align everything you do in that direction, whether it's skills, projects or what have you. It doesn't matter if you do one or multiple projects or if you use one or multiple skills, so long as what you're doing is pushing you in THAT direction.

In other words, focus is NOT about the present so much as it is about the future. It is about knowing where you're going FIRST and knowing what you're gonna do today second. Yet the way I previously understood it I thought that I need to be single minded about what I do in the present, narrow about what skills I utilize or what projects I do. Sure, sometimes that's a good idea, IF it aligns with the end-goal, the location of the grapple! But if it doesn't. If the final location allows for multiple tools to be used in complementary ways, like multiple means of transportation or multiple strings tied to that grapple, then multiple is fine!

Focus isn't about single thing in the present. It's about single thing in the future.

What do you think?

This has been a hot topic during several of our recent Mastermind calls.

One thing we did was to challenge folks to map out the "why" of what they do.

This helps us to understand the things that get us closer to our desired outcome, and eliminate things that take us away from it.

Thanks for sharing this with the forum!

Originally Posted by bflbob

This has been a hot topic during several of our recent Mastermind calls.

Not surprising.

Originally Posted by bflbob

One thing we did was to challenge folks to map out the "why" of what they do.

This helps us to understand the things that get us closer to our desired outcome, and eliminate things that take us away from it.

That's a great strategy, one of those good habits that would be good to develop. Asking ourselves questions sometimes seems so underrated, but whenever I try it myself I get some interesting results. Questions motivate thinking, the more specific a question, the deeper thinking gets.

Originally Posted by bflbob

Thanks for sharing this with the forum!

My pleasure. There are actually times when this sort of stuff bubbles up in my mind and I realize "hey there's a forum of people who think about this stuff so why not share it there and see if any of this makes sense". So sharing it here was actually kinda selfish.

Originally Posted by PhxMJ

Here's an analogy I like to use ...

Focus is business monogamy and good focus is like a great marriage. The greatest [anything] didn't get great by being a polygamist opportunists (dabbling in 10 different "opportunities")... no, they committed to one grand purpose or business ... in effect, they married their purpose. Those who scatter their efforts get scattered results ... like a cheating spouse in the marriage, the relationship typically fails, or is unfulfilling.

Focus is to commit to one grand idea that serves your one grand purpose.

I agree. What I was trying to point out was not that it's ok to have multiple grand purposes or ideas, but rather that the nature of the grand purpose can allow for vastly different paths to be taken towards their fulfillment some of which inevitably involve the utilization of multiple skills and even multiple mutually complementary projects to get there.

It's a difference between trying to develop a single skill towards excellence (which is the typical focus stereotype) and trying to instead develop a skill set needed to achieve a result that requires that set.

The example of former involves most examples typically quoted, like "he ate, slept and lived golf" where playing golf is the single skill and the person's whole life. The example of latter is "he wants to build great sports centers" where it's no longer about playing any particular sport nor about being a great architect nor solely a great business manager. Instead familiarity with sports is necessary, some basic understanding of architecture, people skills necessary to get the right people together behind his vision and a great vision of how he wants those sports centers to be, how they're gonna be better than what exists and so on.

Instead of just focusing on utilization of a single skill he coordinates and develops a skill set that gets him where he wants to go.

Originally Posted by PhxMJ

Agreed, but if that thing in "the future" is incorrectly formulated, the present will also be wrong. Its almost like my Entrepreneurial Premise theory; if your premise for business is selfish and not based on a fundamental need or solution, the actions moving forward will also be flawed.

How do you define what is incorrectly formulated though?

I think this nut is finally cracked, at least as far as I'm concerned. Two things I've recently read really bring this to final conclusion.

First this post at least draws a big question mark on the whole "do one thing" paradigm: ADD Is Your Friend or Why Distractions Are The Key To Your Success. He basically concludes that if you're inclined to do do multiple things to just prioritize them instead of completely rejecting them. That rejecting them would stunt creativity resonates with me quite well as every time I thought about rejecting some things I felt like I would be slicing off an integral piece of myself. It doesn't feel natural.

But what rounds these ideas to beautiful elegance is what I've read in Curly's Law. He does something I've sort of been aiming at above and evolving towards. It's not really about rejecting focusing on one thing. In a contrary, the Curly's law reinforces that idea, but comes at it from a slightly different perspective.

It's deeper than doing any one activity or only one project. It's about having something that underlines everything you do even when you do multiple things. That's kind of what I've been talking about.. It strings everything together. So finding one true thing becomes finding a core commonality to all of your passions. They might seem disparate from the outside, but you have a binding thread for them.

That's it.