“I am amazed at the number of business owners who are saying that they are too busy –‘doing things’- to find 1½ hours to start looking at ways to improve their business or enhance their lifestyle."

Strangely, almost every business we have come in contact with recently, falls into one of two categories:

1) Business is slow, customer’s are scarce, competition is fierce and the margins are getting slimmer by the day

OR

2) The business is flat out, they have more customers than they can deal with, the competition makes no difference, margins are good and they don’t need to advertise but the owners are working way to many hours a week.

The important issue for businesses in group 1 is of course lack of cash flow and or profit while the challenge for group 2 is that the owners don’t have any TIME for anything else!

Quite frankly, both categories represent a serious problem that requires a serious, sustained, and immediate solution… and it is exactly the same one!

Lately, more and more calls have come in requesting my assistance in this area so I felt compelled to write the following in the hopes that it will allow you to focus your daily efforts to best maintain- or create- a competitive advantage.

Protect Your Focus

The fact is, there’s only 24 hours in a day. You, me and every other person has EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME every day… 24 hours, no more-no less. However, it’s what you focus on during those hours that really count. Between the ringing of the phone, urgent emails, instant messages, drop-in visitors, tighter deadlines, endless opportunities and having to deal with those pesky customers, focusing on what’s most important – the highest and best use of your time- has become more important and more of a challenge than ever before.

With all the distractions that abound on a daily basis, we can all lose focus rather easily and be pulled off course routinely. What I want you to remember is that 80% of your future outcomes are going to be determined by just 20% of your activities. Every new task or opportunity becomes yet another contest for time and focus that – once lost- creates collateral damage to existing results and momentum that may never be recovered from.

Time is the most precious of life’s commodities and the goals and aspirations you want to achieve will become nothing but faded memories without sustained focus. You must maintain and jealously guard your focus as ANY individual or organization in which focus is either absent or incidental is destined to become mediocre at best. Lack of focus means your full potential will never see the light of day. It is the key ingredient that can make or break your business, your career and ultimately your life.

Yet, when you look closely at most people and businesses, when you look beyond the facade, you will more often than not find them in an unfocused state.

Focus is a strategic asset and the KEY FACTOR behind all results. - Click to tweet 

Getting even better results require that you concentrate your efforts. That means, focus on the smallest number of activities that will produce the greatest improvement in results. Yet, no other principle is violated as constantly, as recklessly, and as directly or indirectly as the basic principle of focus.

The days of being everything to everyone are effectively over. Your primary objective- in life or in business- is to find your “True North” and then to allocate all possible resources in that direction.

Focus is the future in the sense that it makes a prediction about where the future lies and then allows you to take specific steps to make the future happen. Focus is a language that speaks simply and eloquently to the fundamental human similarity between people. Why? Because everyone struggles with it!