Quotes About Focus

You and your organization have the power to change everything. To create remarkable products and services. To over deliver. To be the best in the world. How dare you squander that resource by spreading it too thin. How dare you settle for mediocre just because you're busy coping with too many things on your agenda, racing against the clock to get it all done.

With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.

Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you've got, you're more likely to do it. And this is precisely why it's difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.

Focus is a choice. The runner who is concentrating on how much his left toe hurts will be left in the dust by the runner who is focusing on winning. Even if the winner's toe hurts just as much. Hurt, of course, is a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is. We have a choice about where to aim the lens of our attention.

Leo Babauta's brilliant little book Zen Habits helps you think your way through this problem. His program is simple: Attempt to create only one significant work a year.

And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.

Don't worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.

Quejarse es estúpido. Actúa u olvídalo.» Stefan Sagmeister

Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

You really can't try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.

Consumers with otaku are the sneezers you seek. They're the ones who will take the time to learn about your product, take the risk to try your product, and take their friends' time to tell them about it. The flash of insight is that some markets have more otaku-stricken consumers than others. The task of the remarkable marketer is to identify these markets and focus on them to the exclusion of lesser markets – regardless of relative size.

Organize your project, your life, and your organization around the minimum. What's the smallest market you can survive on?

Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices that are available to you. If you realize you're at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it's a smart one

It encourages you to focus on your work and the generosity that comes from interacting with (and helping) your community.

Don't fall in love with a tactic and defend it forever. Instead, decide once and for all whether you're in a market or not. And if you are, get through that Dip.

the magic was in the guts it took to carefully curate the customers. Choose the people you serve, choose your future.

Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.

Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources. That's it.

What will make someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It's the understanding of which hard work is worth doing. The only thing that separates great artists from mediocre ones is their ability to push through the dip.

The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.

Are you overinvesting (really significantly overinvesting) time and money so that you have a much greater chance of dominating a market? And if you don't have enough time and money, do you have the guts to pick a different, smaller market to conquer?

If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!)

real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.

Simple: If you can't make it through the Dip, don't start.