Steve Mills - Online Entrepreuership with the SPOKE system

The Power of Focus

Sometimes, I feel that i can be a not very organised person. That’s a bit of an understated sentence, so let me rephrase it.

I am a very unorganised person by default.

It’s not by design, and it’s not from being slack or not being bothered. It’s more from the fact that I just have so much on at the one time. That and I also do a wide variety of things that draw on very different skills and mindsets. Being a contractor that does some entrepreneurial activity on the side has many, many good points. But the one bad point is to keep yourself organised against competing priorities, and not getting in the situation where it all feels too much. You know that point, the overwhelming fear of dread that makes you want to surf the web or play solitaire rather then do work.

In the course of one week I can be doing low level helpdesk support, fixing servers, writing c++ code, developing websites, designing brochures, writing marketing material, organising business deals, doing business development, marketing, sales, buying advertising space, liaising with government, mortgage broking, dealing with contractors, designing logos and generally keeping everyone happy in the process.

AND, to make matters worse, i was working with only a rudimentary list system, or no list at all. I was keeping it all in my head, and it was starting to drive me crazy.

So i took the revolutionary step last week of buying a planner and writing it all down. I know, rocket science it ain’t, but for me it is a big step.

What it has given me is freedom to not keep so many balls in the air, and just to pick one thing and focus on it until it is complete, knowing that that is the action with the greatest priority at that time so it is what I should be giving all of my attention to. Sounds good in theory, and I am working on it.

Focus is a powerful thing.