Blured text on vintage paper with focus on FOCUSIn my management courses, we always use the Three-Legged Stool of Great Performance™ to assess how well employees are doing.  Skill issues are fixed with training, will issues with motivation, and focus through coaching.  In theory, it’s pretty easy to diagnose a person’s issues and apply the right remedy.

When assessing ourselves however, all bets are off.

We can fix our skill problems with self-learning or classes and reflection can help us identify will problems, but focus takes a bit more work.  There is one aspect of focus that can really derail us if we’re not careful and that’s the temptation to lose sight of our goal or intentions and steer off the path.

A couple of years ago, I read a great book called the 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.  In this book, Cardone talked about applying overwhelming effort in order to break through to better success.  Amped up by this, I put together an elaborate plan to blog more and be more assertive in growing my business.

About that time, I ran into a young couple at the church we were attending and began working with the husband on setting some career goals.  He mentioned that his income was ok,  but was supplemented by his wife’s as she taught guitar lessons.  Immediately, the light went on in my head:  how cool would it be to learn just enough guitar chords to blast out some classic riffs such as Angus Young’s intro to Highway to Hell?  I asked about lessons and couldn’t wait to get started.

And then I remembered the 10X Rule.  If I was going to double-down and invest way more effort into my business, where would I fit guitar lessons and practice?  More importantly, would grinding the axe at a pool party lead to more client acquisition or just focus attention on me?  After considering it all, I opted out of the guitar.

It’s pretty easy to fall into this trap.  Just get discouraged enough in the pursuit of your goals and you’ll deviate off into all sorts of other tempting tasks.  I’ve seen colleagues start side businesses that don’t really pan out financially and take them off task of their real objective.  This is usually done as a way to jump-start their primary business by providing an extra income stream, but if you have to promote this additional business, why not just stick to your primary business?  Selling is selling, even if the product is easier or more difficult to sell.

This week, take some time to refine your big objective.  Take a look at the time you spend in pursuit of that and also the time you put into other distractions.  Maybe it’s time to shed some of the extra stuff and run full speed back into your primary pursuit.