Narrow Your Focus, And Maximize Your Potential

It seems for many of us that there are too many things that need to get done and there is simply not enough time to complete all of it. The truth of the matter is there truly isn’t enough time to get all of the things on our never ending list done. There are only 24 hours in a day. You should probably be spending 6­8 of those hours sleeping. As an added, bonus most of us have 40 hours in a week that are dedicated to our profession. So how do we get all of it done? How do we meet all of our obligations?

What I suggest to you is that you don’t even try to meet all of them. My suggestion is for you to focus on what matters the most. Many of us consider ourselves busy people, and for many of us that may be true. I want to challenge the notion that being busy means one is accomplishing things of importance. I see many people carry their busyness as some sort of badge of honor. They feel a great deal of pride in getting many things done. I say that getting a bunch of meaningless things done is nothing to be proud of.

I hear this phrase all too often, and I think it is an inaccurate way that most people perceive their daily actions. The phrase that I hear is ” I was so productive today”. Were you really? In the grand scheme of your life, in the journey of reaching fulfillment, were the tasks that you completed of any relative importance to your aim in life?

In our society there seems to be this culture of multitasking as a way to be more productive. I actually feel that multitasking is another way of saying “Instead of doing one thing really well, I did several things at a mediocre level, and more often than not at a poor level”. We drive and text. Eat while we are surfing the web. Check social media at a pace of about every 10 minutes. We have so many distractions in our life that we actually don’t get a whole lot done. The time spent switching from one thing to another can be costly. Trying to do many things at,once can stretch our abilities too thin.

Now I am not saying that we shouldn’t try to get things done, but I do believe that more focus needs to be put on prioritizing what needs to be done. My challenge to you is to try and narrow down your to do lists and figure out what matters the most. Just because something was the first thing you wrote down on your list, doesn’t mean its the first thing you should do. Ask yourselves, what is the most important thing I want to achieve this year? Then break it down to what the most important thing is that you want to achieve in a month, then a week, then a day. The domino effect real. If you want to accomplish big things the key is to prioritize, line up the dominos if your life, and then set the first one in motion. The old saying is true, “The journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step”. Whats your highest priority? Whats your plan to achieve it? What can you do today to create momentum in your life?