Focusing on What Matters Most
This was a favorite saying of a former colleague of mine. I think about it, use it, and try to practice it daily. It’s easier said than done!
The hardest part of focus is knowing what to focus on. Most people treat everything as if it’s equally important, but that’s rarely true. Some things matter a lot more than others. The trick is figuring out which ones.
The natural state of the world is distraction. Every minute, something is trying to pull your attention. Emails, meetings, notifications. The problem isn’t that you’re bad at focus; it’s that you’re surrounded by things designed to take it away. If you don’t push back, you’ll end up spending your time on whatever feels urgent, not what’s important.
The first step is to decide what really matters. You can’t focus if you don’t know where to aim. The things that matter most tend to be harder to do. They’re also easier to put off because they don’t usually have deadlines. But these are the things that make the biggest difference over time.
Once you know what matters, the next step is to create space for it. This is where most people fail. They try to fit important work into the gaps left over after everything else. I’ve been guilty of this countless times. Let me tell you - it doesn’t work.
You must protect time for what’s important, even if it means saying no to things that seem urgent.
Lesson Learned: Focus isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing less of the wrong things. The fewer distractions you allow, the more you can work on what matters. And the more you work on what matters, the less everything else does.