Tag: Focus

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People Know More & Less About You Than You Think

Surprise!

People around you (trusted advisors, mentors, bosses) tend to know more about you than you think:

  • Who you are
  • What you’ve done
  • How you’ve felt in the past

They know little about:

  • What you are thinking
  • What your plans are
  • How you want to do things, conduct business, uplevel, create/invent/compose?

They are our mistakes, and it is our future.

We hide our decisions from others. We are afraid of our mistakes in the past swallowing up the potential of the future.

“They remember our last mistakes, why even tell them?”

It might sting, and there is something useful in hearing your old mistakes from time to time. You miss out on context by not telling them. The hints to your past are a roadmap to errors in your future. 

Like the Romans who left a slave to say the emperor “you are only a man” after a triumph, sometimes it’s good to get a little dose of someone else’s perception.

They see mistakes you haven’t, and the hints to your past are often a roadmap to errors in your future.

Even if it hurts, the beautiful thing about the future is that is in our hands. 

Most people aren’t out to get you.

If you open yourself up, you’ll find that people are often out to lift you.

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Rest with Intent – It Compounds

High-performance-rest

Being purposeful comes with an advantage

Josh Waitzkin grew up playing chess (he was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher). He wasn’t known as a competitive fighter. Then Josh Waitzkin won the world Tai Chi (push hands) championship.

One thing that Josh took with him from the chess world to competitive fighting was the intent.

He used it for each part of the fight. One thing that stood out to me was how he changed how he recovered between rounds.

Usually, when tired, most of us put our hands on our knees or have a seat. Josh didn’t do that.

In between rounds he laid on the ground. Flat, as if he were going to sleep.

It’s a smarter way to recover. It’s intentional.

The difference between that and the usual method is tiny. Even so, since this was a continual fight, that advantage compounded. By the time the fighters reached the end of the fight, that little edge had made a huge difference. It propelled Josh to beat his highly skilled opponent.

Sure, it looked silly to his opponents at the time.

The thing is, no one remembers how you recovered between rounds. They just remember how you fought.

When we work, we have to think about, with intent, how we rest. We have to beat back the idea of “silly” or making sure we conform to an unwritten standard.

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Find Out When it’s Slow

It’s when you can focus

In the restaurant industry,  the business comes in shifts. Two stand out.

There is the “heavy” shift, meaning the restaurant is busy. People focus. They just handle incoming requests.

On the other hand, there is “slow.” This is the time where the restaurants distinguish themselves. 

  • The good restaurants do prep, get the dining room in order, take stock of what happened and make adjustments for the next rush.
  • The bad restaurants use it to catch their breath and don’t think about what’s next.

Our lives follow the same rhythm. 

There are times when we are going fast, just trying to keep up, and time where we can to level up.

Pay attention to your rhythm and look for the “slow” time. It’s there where you leverage your best self. 

 

 

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Sharpen Your Sword; It Doesn’t Need Another Guard

Take away things when you can.

A sword becomes sharper by removing the imperfections, not by adding features. Once a sword is out of the “factory,” you spend your time sharpening it, not adding an additional scabbard.

How do you make a sword sharper? You remove the imperfections.

Remember, nothing is free. When you add, you pay.

Often, there is an urge to “do more,” or deal with its sibling “don’t miss.”

You make an impact magnitudes faster by removing instead of adding. 

What is more effective in the field: a sharp sword or a pretty one.

Which would you rather be?

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Not Doing It – Stop Adding New

No, we don’t need anything but you.

“Would it be cool if we…”
“How about if we add…”
“We don’t want to miss…”

The answer: no.

You don’t need more of anything with the projects you have. I saw a lot of this when coaching at altMBA, especially early in the program. Students would wonder about “what else” instead of what was there. As a result, the project lacked power. Instead of focus, they went for features.

A notice: If you are reading this, you more than likely have enough tools and your brand/tool/product has enough “features.”

So, that new thing isn’t a need. It’s a way to distract you from what matters.

What matters is doing the hard work of getting the most out of the ideas you have.

It means dealing with the “I don’t know what to do!”

Building the endurance to sit in the tough part and see instead of searching for new is a valuable skill. One of the beautiful things about altMBA is that it teaches you to recognize fear. It takes a lot of shipping to dance with it with reckless abandon, but the first step is recognizing it.

We all look for the juicer when life hands us lemons because that is the only way we get to make lemonade.

Be the juicer.

Note: I am a former student and coach of altMBA.

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Missing Sleep Doesn’t Get You on the Scoreboard And Neither Does Busy

Go to sleep.

You don’t get points for making things harder on yourself.

Sleeping, like eating, is an important function to how we operate.

The idea that 4 hours of sleep is a badge of honor is like saying you ate 3 eggs per day, and that’s it. After a day or two, your body would throw a hissy fit.

The lack of sleep is doing the same thing to your mind.

I get it: it’s trendy to say how “busy” you are.

It makes us feel important, but it’s shallow. The “busy” stuff generally cuts into our sleep and the “busy” is rarely important.

That’s why no one ever keeps track of your “busy” days.

The body and mind keep track of the days you don’t sleep, and it just makes things harder on you because your body didn’t do its work.

If clarity and focus matter, start treating sleep as importantly as you do dinner.

Get some sleep.

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Are You Paying Attention?

Take a deep breath.

Take a second to think.

Exhale.

While you are reading this, listening to that new album, and answering texts, something important just screamed past you.

  • Maybe it was the first thing this post asked you to do?
  • Maybe it was an insane solo or lyric that would change your life?
  • Maybe it was the text from your significant other that changes the way you see them?

Or maybe it wasn’t? You won’t know unless you give something real attention.

 

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Start With The Hard Part i.e., The Push-up Doctrine

Do push-ups now!

Sir, yes, sir!?!?!?!

No, you aren’t reading the instruction manual to Army Boot Camp, just the inner monologue to my out of bed workout. It’s a reminder to do the hard part first.

I remind myself to do push-ups first because they are hard. I can’t meander when I do them because the moment I feel my body weight I can’t avoid it. It immediately gets me active.

After a set of push-ups, I become more mindful of the exercises that follow. My form is better and I don’t waste time.

When I avoid push-ups and push that work to the end, I lose.

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Persistence Also Means Pared Down – My Takeaways From March

Focus Focus Focus!

No one has a cheat code on life. You can’t run forever, you can’t dance to every song, and you don’t get to eat everything on the menu.

This month, more than any other, I realized we  have limited juice. Although I left my job, I’ve spent my time building relationships and building stuff (which is going to result in some launches in the next month 🙂 ). On top of that, I had to handle a sinus infection and working on attaining my altMBA. It was a sincere push on my time and resources. I got a lot done, so it couldn’t have been a better month to think about persistence.

If I had one takeaway from the month, it would be this: focus is the only way your persistence matters.

I only got through this month by recognizing I had to pare down.

Persistence is a gift, and a fleeting one at that because it means something only if it’s geared to push you over the finish line. You can’t do that if you are persistent in many things. You go nowhere being persistent in ten projects at once. It’s better to be persistent at one project ten times.

We have limited juice, and our spirit will “clock out” when we go too far.

Biggest Lesson – Focus is the only way your persistence matters

My Correct Assumptions

  • Be deliberate as possible
  • Selection is far more important than will (Focus!!!)

My Incorrect Assumptions

  • I need to schedule things to make sure they get done – I have to schedule some things and not others. Sometimes I work best with reminders. Sometimes I work best with it in the calendar. Sometimes I work better with just a list.

Important Posts

Books

 

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If You Are Losing Focus, Add Weight

I don’t go to the gym as much as I should, but when I am there, I love to see the level of focus.

When you are on the bench press, lifting 250 pounds, you find laser focus when there is a chance that the weight will fall on your neck. You’d better put all your attention on that bar. There is no time to talk to anyone that isn’t on your team. You aren’t turning your head to talk about the weather or the San Antonio Spurs, it’s either about this bar or nothing. When the focus is there, and the team is right, the person who is lifting can do things they didn’t think possible, all while getting stronger in the process.

Here is the rub: if the weight on the bar is light enough them to do it while not needing that focus, then they effectively have wasted their time. It might look good to other people, but since you need to focus and your muscles find it easy enough to lift without thought, then you don’t get stronger and you didn’t prove anything.

In life, if you find a lack of focus taking over your life, perhaps its time to add weight? Lean into a project a little more, get a little more vulnerable, call someone you don’t want to speak to do something that pushes your chips further into the table. Put the bar over your neck* and see if you lift. You might surprise yourself…

*Like at the gym, its best to do this with a spotter, or maybe a few of them. If it is too much, call for help. 

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