The Power of Focus

I did a talk for the Chamber of Commerce last week on how to get fit during the quarantine. Pretty wild times. Since we are still limited here (NY), 20 business owners met at a diner parking lot with masks on to hear me speak.

It’s interesting how quarantine or not it always seems to boil down to the fundamentals.

The 3 I mentioned in my talk were discipline, consistency, and focus.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about fitness or finances. Without solid character traits like these, success will remain elusive.

Let’s talk about focus.

To me, focus is all about prioritizing what is most important. Oftentimes, this will be the big lever that makes other things move as well.

You can train for a marathon, a powerlifting competition, or a BJJ tournament, but you probably can’t train for all 3 effectively.

Here’s what Oxord has to say. Focus is an act of concentrating interest or activity on something.

Now that we know what focus is, let’s touch on how a lack of focus can manifest itself. When we are unfocused, we find ourselves busy with multiple tasks. It’s hard to make any real progress this way.

We mistake being busy for being productive.

While it’s OK to have multiple interests, think about anything you’ve achieved success in your life so far. Chances are you were “all in” and completely focused in that area before finding success.

If you want to find financial success and build wealth, you must focus.

I remember at one point my wife and I were doing some good things to work our way out of the financial mess we created. However, we didn’t have complete focus. She commented that we needed to be all in and she was right. As soon as she said that it was game on baby! We became laser focused and made more progress and faster than we thought we could.

If you truly want to succeed with your money (If you don’t, there is another issue), you need to figure out what to focus on. What’s the one thing (not five things) you need to do to make your finances better?

Here are some questions to help you see how you’re doing in this area:

• How many things are you focusing on right now?

• Do you spend more time watching television or on social media than planning your future?

• What’s stealing your focus?

Is what I’m doing right now the best use of my time?