Remember when you were a kid how you could make paper
catch fire by focusing the sun’s rays with a magnifying
glass?
You’d look over your shoulder at the sun,
get the angle of
the rays just right, and move the magnifying glass until
you could see a small circle of bright light on the piece
of paper in front of you. Gradually, that circle began to
turn brown and the paper began to smoulder until its edges
began to curl under as the flame took hold.
How did that humble magnifying glass start something as
powerful and elemental as a fire? The answer, of course, is
concentration. Concentration of the sun’s rays into a tiny,
intense circle of heat. In a word, FOCUS.
We work the same way. If we truly focus our energy,
concentration and creativity, we bring an intensity to the
task that we just can’t generate if these things are
scattered amongst several projects at once.
Now, to simply say to you, “focus your energy and you will
achieve greater results” is all very well. It’s quite another
matter entirely to be able to do it, especially when there
are umpteen different priorities constantly tugging away at
you, each demanding at least some of your attention and
NOW.
To bring focus to your various activities, you need to break
the cycle of allowing yourself to be distracted from the
task at hand.
-> Identify Priority Tasks
lunchtime results
lunchtime result
To start with, you should allocate your time proportionately
to all of the various tasks you need to do. Notice I said
NEED to do. The first step is to decide what truly needs to
be done and what doesn’t. If you categorize a task as
something that needs to be done, ask yourself why it is
necessary. Another way of asking the same question is to
ask yourself, “what will happen if I don’t do this today?”.
If the ultimate consequence is that nothing will happen, why
do it?
If you find yourself reluctantly concluding, well, I don’t
NEED to do this, I WANT to, then put it into the “ne