Peak performance experts say things like, “You should focus'. You need to eliminate distractions. Commit to one thing and become an excellent person.
This is good advice. The more I study successful people from all walks of life (artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, scientists), the more I believe that focus is a critical success factor.
But there is also a problem with this tip.
Of the many options before you, how do you know what to focus on? How do you know were to direct your energy and attention? How do you determine what else should commit to do?
I don't claim to have all the answers, but let me share what I have learned so far.
"Until something comes easily ..."
Like most entrepreneurs, I struggled my first year building a business.
I launched my first product with no idea who I would sell it to. (Big surprise, nobody bought it). I reached out to important people, mishandled expectations, made stupid mistakes, and essentially ruined the opportunity to build good relationships with people I respected. I tried to learn to code myself, made a change to my website, and removed everything I had done for the previous three months.
In short, he did not know what he was doing.
During my year of many mistakes, I received some good advice: "Try things until something comes out easily." I took the advice seriously and tried four or five different business ideas over the next 18 months. I'd give each of them a chance for two to three months, mix in some freelance work so I could keep working and paying the bills, and repeat the process.
Over time, I found “something that was easy for me” and was able to focus on building a business rather than trying to come up with an idea. In other words, I have been able to simplify.
This was the first thing I found out about figuring out what to focus on. If you want to master and deeply understand the basics of a task, you may, paradoxically, need to start by casting a very wide web. By trying many different things, you can get a feel for what is easiest for you and set yourself up for success. It is much easier to focus on something that is working than to wrestle with a bad idea.
Make a call on what to focus on
Assuming you're willing to try things and experiment a bit, the next question is, "How do I know what's easy for me?"
The best answer I can give is to pay attention'. Usually this means measuring something .
- If you are an entrepreneur, keep track of your marketing and promotional efforts.
- If you are trying to gain muscle, keep track of your workouts .
- If you are learning to play an instrument, keep track of your practice sessions .
However, even when you measure things, there comes a point where you have to make a call and decide what to focus on.
In my opinion, this moment of decision is one of the central tensions of entrepreneurship. Do we keep trying new things or do we bend a strategy? Are we trying to innovate or are we committed to doing one thing well?
Everyone wants to know the right time to simplify and focus on one thing, but no one does. That is what makes success so difficult. Entrepreneurship is not like baking a cake. There is no recipe. There is no guide.
At this stage, one of your best option is to decide. You can't try everything. At some point, you don't need more information, you just need to make a decision.
A volume of work
Now we've reached the stage where figuring out what to focus on becomes a real possibility.
You've experimented with enough ideas to discover one or two options that seem to give you better than average results,. You have overcome the hurdle of wanting more information and the fear of committing to something and now you have made a decision. You took the job. You started the business. You signed up for the class. Are you ready.
Welcome to the routine. It is time to work hard. Not just once or twice. Not just when it's easy. But a constant and repeated volume of work. You have to fall in love with boredom and stay on the bus .
It is through this large number of repetitions that you will come to understand the fundamentals of your task. You may know what greatness looks like before this point, but you won't understand how to achieve greatness until you've put the work into yourself.
In the words of Ira Glass , "your taste is good enough to realize that what you are doing is a kind of disappointment for you." You will bridge that gap between what you know is good and what you can produce yourself by doing the reps .
This applies to many areas of life.
Do you want to dress well and develop a killer style? You're going to have to try on a lot of clothes before you can simplify to the essentials. You will probably have to buy a lot of clothes before you can get an idea of what your style is for day to day. I'm not a fan of promoting rampant consumerism, but if that's the skill set you want to develop, it will likely take some experimentation and effort.
Do you want to become a great cook? How many bad meals do you think you need to prepare before you can prepare a “simple but tasty dinner” when you feel like it? I'd say hundreds at least. I don't know many people who are amazing cooks after making their 10th meal. Developing a deep understanding of the basics of cooking takes a while.
Do you want to write an amazing book? You're going to have to write and write and write and write some more. You need to type hundreds of thousands of words to find your voice, maybe millions. Then you need to edit those words and reduce them to the most powerful version possible.
Only after the reps have been completed will you understand which parts of the task are critical to success.
Get to the simple
Now finally, after trying a lot of things and figuring out what to focus on and doing enough reps, you can start to simplify. You can eliminate fat because you know what is essential and what is unnecessary.
As the French Blaise Pascal wrote in his Provincial Letters: "If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter."
Mastering the fundamentals is often the longest and most difficult journey of all.
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