Focus on the essential
One of the very first mentors I had gave me advise on a very important value and type of attribute every great founder has, and it was focus. The capacity to engage in the most essential activity you should be doing and in the end, the most important goal you are looking to achieve.
It is impressive but understandable at the same time how someone can be distracted from the essential element you should be caring. Ironically, and involved in technology, it is thanks to the Internet and the immersion in social networks, seeing press releases about irrelevant news from companies who have, at certain point, the right connections to publish about nothing and can pretend they are important enough, making your work, effort and focus, easily distracted.
Nonetheless, that’s something that helps myself to be trained in being focus. Testing all my senses, in the present and thinking in the future, using all of them to be aligned and pursue the essential thing to be motivated on.
I believe every founder, as my mentor once said, should have an essential thing to be focused, and that is part of a bigger purpose. Without prioritization, the efforts on being focused might be worthless, because all the energy can be dissipated and unaddressed.
It is interesting to know that the word Priority, became recognized as a plural word not much time ago.
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality.” ~ Greg McKeown, Essentialism
This is a great reference to recognize there’s only one important thing to be focused; if there are multiple elements, the cost of switching between all of those, might impact and generate huge long-term costs.
It is hard sometimes to be concentrated with all the media, public posts and information moving on all possible mediums we use as consumers, but that should nutre again the purpose of focusing. It is fair to ask yourself many times and in many different ways whether you are really following your main purpose, sometimes you might feel alone and think nobody is willing to help you, so your courage and inner self is your main support. And that’s when you compete against you and only you. No one else. You should be the best version of you at this and every moment. That is something that keeps myself motivated, and reminds me the importance of being focus.
I question my actions all the time, I doubt of my decisions, and I feel insecure on some of my feelings, but that, in the end, is what reminds me that I am a human being, and nutre my need to be focused on the essential.
