Focus Pocus
Broad thinking helps you identify your purpose, clarity of focus allows you to achieve it.
Our world is full of distractions that will hamper your progress, if you allow them. Never have we had access to so much content and so many connections, but it’s not always for the better. Breadth is good for research and exploration, but focus is essential to making meaningful progress and achieving the outcomes you desire – whether that’s landing a dream job, building a business or crafting a lifestyle.
I encourage you to reflect on what energises and inspires you, versus what saps your energy and holds you back from getting what you want out of your career and life.
Here’s a few simple suggestions, based on my own experience, to improve your focus:
Mute or disable all but the most urgent notifications on your mobile and devices.
Unsubscribe from newsletters that don’t inspire you, or which you rarely read.
Unfollow people and organisations on social media, including LinkedIn, if you find their content negative, boring or irrelevant – especially if it’s AI-generated slop. (Some say quit social media altogether, and by all means do, but I personally find Instagram and Facebook useful for keeping in touch with long distance friends.)
Leave messaging groups, like WhatsApp and Slack, that you don’t get value from.
Stop giving energy to friends, family, colleagues and clients who take but never give back; this is controversial, but if you’re honest you know at least a few.
Minimise the commitments and stuff that cost you more than they benefit you.
Maximise the time you spend doing what inspires you – the most important of all.
This message is consciously brief, although you could of course apply these principles in numerous other ways; I’ll leave it to you to figure that out. My only hope is that focusing your time and energy enables you to work and live more purposefully.