Getting S@#$ Done - The Power of Entrepreneurial Focus
Post XII from the [ALIGNED] blog series for entrepreneurs
By Mike Brcic, Chief Explorer, Wayfinders
This is post 12 of the [ALIGNED] series, with tips, tools and wisdom to help you build an Aligned Company (resilient, self-managing, and purpose-driven) and Aligned Life (lived in line with your values, purpose and ideals).
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Getting S@#$ Done - The Power of Entrepreneurial Focus
In my Wayfinding Facebook group for entrepreneurs, the topic of focus and how to prioritize has come up a few times as of late.
Focus is a common problem for most entrepreneurs; we all struggle with maximizing our work time on productive activities. This problem is only exacerbated in the midst of all of the disruption happening in the world these days.
How does one prioritize one’s activities when it’s hard to even predict what the world - or our industry - will look like in a month, let alone a year?
Let’s break down this problem into what I see as two parts:
Confusion as to what I should be spending my work time on.
Getting too easily distracted.
The latter is an issue of getting one’s monkey mind - as the Buddhists might call our easily distracted minds - harnessed towards productive ends.
The former issue is an issue that can be solved with good process, and what I’ll focus on in this article.
THE POWER OF ACTION
The future has always been an uncertain, nebulous place, one that I prefer not to spend too much time in. It’s too hard to predict what the world - or my world - will look like a few years or even a few months out, so I’ve preferred to try and keep my thoughts grounded in the present.
The future has taken a massive tilt toward uncertainty now with the advent of COVID-19 and a global pandemic. That uncertainty is primarily playing out in how our leaders are responding, but also in how we, collectively, are responding to it.
That high level of uncertainty can lead to high levels of stress and anxiety, which can then lead to high levels of paralysis. If we have no idea what the future will look like, how can we plan for our businesses and our lives?
It’s easy in a case like this to get totally paralyzed and do nothing.
The key to getting out of this paralysis.
As a good friend likes to say, “In the absence of clarity, take action.”
In other words, pick a direction and go there. If you discover along the way that it’s the wrong path, then course-correct and choose a different one. But you need to choose.
The Power of Focus
A very successful entrepreneur told me many years ago “Never underestimate the power of focus. It’s like a superpower.” He was speaking specifically about himself and about entrepreneurs, but it applies everywhere.
I’ve learned from the hundreds of entrepreneurs in my network that what separates the successful ones from everyone else is focus: they’re simply better than everyone else at staying focused on what they want and doing only the things that will get them there. They’re dedicated to saying no to anything that doesn’t align with their very specific vision of what they want and how they’ll get there.
So how do we stay focused?
Below are a few powerful principles and methods that will help you achieve that elusive quality.
THE POWER OF VISION
I used to love making plans. I made elaborate plans for the future - for my companies and for my life - and usually looking 3 years out. I went to great lengths to map out exactly what I wanted my companies and my life to look like in the future. Putting everything down in great detail would ensure that I knew exactly where I was heading and what I would need to do to get there.
The problem with that approach, I discovered, was two-fold:
I’m passionate about my own growth, which for me is simply shorthand for a difficult process of deeply getting to know oneself, and understanding the programming that influences my worldview and mental models. The more I go through this process of discovery, the clearer I get about what is important to me and the more I’m able to shed misconceptions that no longer serve me.
The problem with this, if you can call it that, is that plans I make a year or two ago can often become irrelevant in the light of new self-discoveries. So planning 3 years out means that two years from now a significantly different me may find it meaningless to pursue what today’s me deems important.Being in goal-oriented mode means that I’m always chasing things and achievements. I’ve come to discover that climbing metaphorical mountains of achievements is an inherently unfulfilling process. As soon as I reach the top of one mountain, I’m immediately looking to the next peak. And I don’t want to spend my life chasing moving goalposts.
For that reason, I’m less and less focused these days on goals and planning. These days, when I write my Vivid Vision, whether it’s for my life or for my company, it’s less about the things I want ($10M in revenue, a published book, etc.) and more about envisioning how I will feel and the values I will be aligned with.
So when I sit down to ‘plan’, I: a) don’t look more than one year out* and b) try to deeply envision and imagine what my life will be like.
This might look more like a statement such as:
“I work a maximum of 20 hours a week, and when I work I’m deeply engaged and in flow.”
rather than:
“I’ll deliver my TEDxTalk in front of 2,000 people”.
The latter is a specific goal and while it might be an interesting and worthwhile pursuit, I’m only interested in it if it aligns with the first statement.
*with the world more uncertain than ever amidst the current COVID-19 disruption, even planning a year out can be meaningless or, at best, very difficult to achieve. Plans I may have made in February would probably have been rendered meaningless by April, and plans I make now (end of July) might be rendered meaningless by December. For that reason, these days I’m focused more on the next 3-6 months when it comes to planning.
So, in a nutshell… make sure you have a plan so that your actions and tasks can be focused on staying aligned with that plan. Plan no more than a year out, and stay focused on the plan, but make sure you’re taking frequent readings to ensure your plan aligns with the current reality.
Look ahead… but not too far.
THE POWER OF NO
We entrepreneurs are like the proverbial dog easily distracted by a passing squirrel.
We were intent on going to the park to meet up with our friends and attend to the all-important work of ball-chasing, but dammit… squirrel!
The power of clarifying your vision, whether for the next 6 months, year, or 3 years, is that it spells out for you what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t.
Acceptable behaviour = actions and decisions that move you toward your vision.
Unacceptable behaviours = actions and decisions that are squirrels.
Every day, reread your vision to remind yourself of where you’re heading. Ensure that your activities, tasks, decisions, etc. are aligned with that vision. Say no to everything else, it’s just more annoying squirrels.
NOTE: I won’t get into the issues of meaningless diversions such as Netflix, Facebook, drinking a litre of wine for lunch, etc. I can address those in another post, but for now I wanted to address the issue of how to keep your work hours focused on meaningful work. If you have terrible work habits and can only work 3 hours a day, then at least you can ensure that those 3 hours are meaningful and productive.
THE POWER OF 3
In a future post I’ll go into deeper detail on the full execution system I use to stay focused on my most important priorities (which includes Quarterly projects and goals and 2-week sprints), but I don’t want to get too off-track or overwhelm you. The point of this post is to show you how to make your days meaningful.
So for now I’ll leave out the intermediate steps between the long-term vision and narrowing down to your day’s activities. Even without them you can get a lot of value out of following this process.
Assuming you have clarified your vision and you’re committed to avoiding the chasing of squirrels, here’s a very simple system for getting the most out of your day.
Ready?
It’s simple:
Focus on 1 to 3 things each day, and no more than 3.
Every morning (or, ideally, the evening prior), write down the 1 to 3 activities that will have the greatest impact on moving you toward your vision, in descending order from most important to less important.
A powerful tip I learned from Hugh Jackman is to write these down in the past tense, as if they already happened. For instance “I completed the first draft of my new talk.”
When you’re ready to start work, start with #1 and devote one full hour to it, without distraction. Turn off your phone (if you can) and don’t check email or your social channels (unless they’re important to the task). Get to work on activity #1 right away and work for a full hour.
After an hour, feel free to check email, check your social channels, eat a pint of ice cream, anything to give yourself a break. When you’re ready to start working again, keep working on #1 and don’t move on to #2 until #1 is done. Likewise, don’t move on to #3 until #2 is done.
At the end of the day, review your progress toward completing your 1 to 3 things. I actually have these written in a Google Sheet and at the end of the day I give myself a score out of 10 to assess my success in completing these things. If I missed the mark (if my score is less than 8), then I take a minute to reflect on why that was and what I might do to avoid that happening again.
SUMMARY
That’s it. It’s a simple system, but it’s extremely powerful (and to be honest, not always easy to stick to).
Take the time to clarify your vision for your life and for your company.
Write down 1 to 3 things every day that will contribute to moving you toward your vision.
Stay focused on those 1 to 3 things and say no to all the squirrels that want to keep you from your important ball-chasing.