I’ve studied other people, read books and tried experiments. I think those sorts of things help people be more efficient with productivity – meaning they get more done in less time or with less effort – but there’s a qualitative aspect to productivity that is harder to learn.
And the qualitative aspect matters at least as much as efficiency. Getting MORE done isn’t necessarily as effective as getting things done WELL. And there’s one key that contributes more than anything else to the latter.

Focus.

We’ve all heard that word before. In fact, I’ve written before about “laser-like” focus, which I take to mean complete attention paid to a subject and maintaining that attention over time, ignoring distractions.
Distractions, you see, are what prevent most people from the top levels of success.
For example, most of us have some level of mastery of whatever skill we use in our jobs or businesses. You’re probably good at what you do, or you wouldn’t be making a living doing it. But it seems that some people, no matter how good they are at something, don’t get as far as others. Why? I think it’s usually because they get distracted by things.

I know that in my business, new opportunities or new ideas come along constantly. If you own your own business or manage a business, you know that you have to decide what opportunities to pursue and what ideas to let go. If you spend your time and devote your attention to “non-core” activities, the core of your business tends to suffer.

But it’s easy to say “focus on what’s important.” The truth of the matter is that the entrepreneur in us HAS to consider new and innovative ideas, because that’s at least part of what got us to where we are today. The same applies to someone’s career – if you’ve gotten ahead, taken your career to where you wanted to go, it’s difficult to ignore new possibilities.

The trick is asking yourself “Does this new thing add to my main thing?” If the answer is yes, then maybe it’s worth pursuing. If you pursue it, and you start to see that it doesn’t have the potential you thought it did, then you must put it down and get back to your main thing.

That requires that laser-like focus mentioned above. The people who are able to maintain it are the most successful. The people who are easily distracted are not as successful.
I think there’s a secret to maintaining that focus that many people struggle with. Every now and then, you have to turn the focus off. You have to give it a rest. If you tried to sprint a marathon, you wouldn’t make it very far, would you? You have to realize that success, too, is a marathon and you have to pace yourself. That even includes pacing your level of focus.