Ruthless Focus: The Key to Achieving Your Goals
The reason you want to be ruthless with your focus is because your focus is your time, and your time is the only thing that you truly have in life. You can always make more money, get more clothes, eat more food, and acquire more of almost anything. However, you cannot create more time. It is finite and more precious than any resource on Earth.
If you don't protect your time by focusing on what you really want, you won't achieve your goals in the time you desire. So one of the ways that we think we're focused, but we're not is what I like to call precrastination. Precrastination is often obvious, like cleaning your house instead of writing an essay. Oh, you know, that was my favorite back in college. So things like that are precrastination. We know we're avoiding something. But there's a subtler form of procrastination that plagues business owners: task-adjacent activities.
Task-adjacent activities are things that feel productive but don't move the needle in your business. For example, tweaking your website copy repeatedly when business is slow won't solve your problems. The real needle movers are actions like networking and reaching out to potential clients, not endlessly perfecting details.
Identify the needle movers for your goals. For instance, if you want to run a 5K, the needle mover is getting out and starting to run, not researching workout programs endlessly. In a business setting, if you want more clients, attend networking events and meet potential clients rather than tweaking your website copy.
Cut out the unnecessary tasks and focus on the actions that directly lead to your goals. Think of two or three key activities that will bring you closer to your objective, such as gaining more clients or increasing revenue. Once you have enough clients and revenue, you can hire help, freeing up more of your precious time.
Building focus is like building a muscle. It requires effort and practice. To help stay focused, set alarms or reminders on your phone. These reminders can be as frequent as every 15 minutes if necessary, asking yourself if you're working on a needle mover activity. Regular check-ins throughout the day can keep you on track and prevent you from slipping back into old, unproductive patterns.
Understand that staying focused is challenging because our brains are wired for comfort and sameness. This comfort zone can pull you back into old habits. But with persistent effort, you can strengthen your focus muscle. Even if you occasionally fall back into old patterns, remind yourself to return to your focus. Over time, you’ll spend more time on the right track and less on distractions.
To stay focused, consider these strategies:
Set alarms or reminders to check if you're engaging in needle-moving activities.
Regularly check in on your top priorities, whether that’s several times a day or at specific intervals.
Build your focus muscle gradually; it will get easier over time.
Be ruthless with your focus. Identify and commit to the needle movers. This approach will get you further, faster, and closer to the life you envision. If you have any questions or need support, feel free to reach out for micro-coaching and training. You deserve to live your vision board-worthy life today, not someday.
