Focus

When Warren Buffet was asked the most critical thing that a person needs to succeed, his answer was Focus.

If you don’t have focus, and I will add clarity to the mix, you will be hard-pressed to have the success you desire. Of course, you can still have success in life, though not to the level that one wants.

So what does it take to have this type of focus and clarity? How to sustain it consistently throughout your life. Like life itself, there is an ebb and flow. As you are traveling through this journey, your lens will be in and out of focus. Your objective is to keep it focused for as long as you can. As it starts to get cloudy, fuzzy by circumstances arising out of your control that fog up the lens, readjust, pivot, change it so that you can get back to being productive and back to where it is focused again.

The stronger the WHY, the easier the how becomes. The stronger the WHY easier it is to Focus. To be clear as to the direction that you want to go.

Great! We have established that you need to know your WHY. Of course, there are books written on that specifically, so I suggest you read Simon Sinek’s book Find Your Why.

Now that you know your WHY and you are hyper-focused and clear about what you want to achieve, now it’s just a matter of taking the next right action. You see, that is where people get stuck. That is where The Resistance comes into play, where your ego and your Upper Limit Problems start to affect your life and, in turn, your consistency. It would help if you learned how to manage all of those daily. So it’s not about JUST DOING IT, as Nike wants you to believe. It might be more about STICKING TO IT consistently, day in and day out. That’s the struggle that most of us have. Yes, I am included for sure. As you know, my mantra is all about just that.

“I am going to stay out of my own way, I am going to keep my ego in check, and I am going to fight the resistance every step of the way.”

That is how I start my day because I know that it will be difficult for me to have a great day if I don’t. The power of words and putting yourself in a positive state to be productive and make each day your masterpiece relies on the best version of you showing up every day.

So what tools do you have in your toolbox to stay focused every day?

Have you set up your day so that it doesn’t control you?

Are you working out in the morning to get your juices flowing? Do you have a morning routine that includes journaling or meditating? Some coaches suggest you take a cold shower first thing in the morning? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you waking up rested?

How is your work environment? How are you dealing with those everyday distractions that steal precious time from your day?

You deal with this by setting up Success Systems. And Processes. Systems that will help you have a successful day. Habits that you have established so that you won’t have to think about it. For example, I wanted to write every weekday, but I had trouble focusing on it, and the resistance was winning. I struggled with being consistent. I tried everything I can imagine. I went to a different room; I left my house, went where there were people, and went somewhere quiet. I went by the water and so on until I decided to attach my writing routine to a pre-existing routine. I believe they call that trigger stacking or habit stacking. You attached one habit to another. So every morning, I have an alarm that goes off at 7:02 ( don’t ask why I just set my alarm to that one day just in case I didn’t get up at 5:00 or 5:30 am. ) So when that alarm goes off, I make my bed and then feed the dog. Like clockwork. Every day without fail. So I decided that after I fed Freedom, my dog, I would sit down and write. Not for a specific amount of time or number of words. I would sit down and write. Some days are easier than others. It helps if I know what I am going to write about beforehand. So I am not staring in space and get distracted. So part of my evening routine is deciding on what writing I am going to do. I also take my phone and put it in my dresser draw not to get distracted by it.

That is just one Success System and Process that I put into place to write. Then I reward myself by going to work out. No writing, No training.

So what tools do you have to help you stay focused and keep the distractions to a minimum? I have written a short pdf called Distraction Assasinators, which you can get by clicking this link.

Take some time and put together a toolbox of your distraction assassinators as well that works for you. It should be a requirement for everyone living in this world of techie distractions.

So stay focused and achieve your goals one day at a time.

Joshua