The Main Thing

Single minded focus can be absolutely liberating as it relates to getting results.  Ever play baseball with gnats flying all around you?  Ever run in the soft sand or deep snow?  Ever try to have a conversation with your wife while watching football (danger alert!)? Focus is critical in all things important.  What this means for me is that when it comes to the important actions of my day, multi-tasking is out the window.  Multi-tasking has its place (somewhere, I guess), but in order to truly gain momentum and leverage the “zone state” that yields the best results, single-minded focus is the way to go.  Consider this illustration: take a magnifying glass outside on a warm, sunny day and hold it over some dry grass (or a small insect if you’re a 7 year old boy!) for 1 or 2 minutes and what happens?  The light is focused into heat and starts burning its subject! Yet, you could walk around all day with that magnifying glass, with constant sunlight passing through, never focusing it in any one place and how much heat is generated?  None.  Use this principal by truly being present for the things that are most important at a particular time – in other words, determine the main thing, and then keep the main thing the main thing.