The 80/20 Rule of Focus

The Common Misconception Around Focus

When it comes to common “success” advice, you’ll often hear the topic of focus coming up. However, most of the focus is on the micro level. You’ll get tips like using app blockers, disabling YouTube’s recommendations and so on.

However…

Most gains in terms of focus are on the macro level.

So that’s what we’ll dive into in this newsletter!

Direction > Speed

Let me sketch a hypothetical situation to highlight the difference between focusing on the micro and the macro levels of focus:

Let’s say you spend 3 hours answering customer service emails every day.

Now, you dive deep into the topic of productivity and you manage (after a lot of time) to greatly improve your ability to concentrate. As a result, you can now answer all of them in 2 hours.

You just won yourself an hour of your time back!

That’s what I call the micro level.

Let’s continue the example:

With your newfound time, you work on analyzing customer feedback, so that you can improve their experience. It’s a new task that’s uncomfortable and frustrating to figure out. But you managed to implement a couple of changes.

The results?

By implementing the improvements, customer satisfaction has increased a lot more compared to you answering endless emails. Not only has it helped make a lasting improvement, after 2 weeks you also start getting fewer customer service emails as a result.

That’s what happens when you focus on the macro.

Keep this in mind:

If you’re walking in the wrong direction, walking faster will only take you AWAY from your destination quicker. The “slow” hiker who gets the direction right will arrive there before the “fast” hiker who struggles with directions!

The 80/20 Rule of Improving Macro Focus

If I were to ask you right now about your goals and what you’re doing to achieve them, I’m sure you could list 152 things that you’re working on or want to do. There are SO MANY things you could be doing to achieve any one goal.

But…

How do you know if you’re focusing on the right thing?

Here’s the first key ingredient:

Just curious, do you know how a colony of bees operates?

A large amount of the bees are focused on gathering nectar from plants. Once a colony finds a plentiful source, roughly 80% of the workers focus on extracting as much of it as they possibly can.

But, what about the other 20%?

They’re focused on exploration!

‘They fly off in random directions in hopes of finding even better sources of nectar. Because of this, they might find an even better and/or closer source of food. When they do, the colony shifts 80% of workers to the new source.

On top of that, it is also protection in case a single source dries up.

Here’s what you can learn from those bees:

You probably already have a solid idea of what to do to achieve your goals.

Focus 80% of your attention there!

With this time, be deliberate and keep an open mindset. Your goal is NOT to just work like a machine, but rather to improve your skills, understanding, attention to detail, ability to focus on the task, proficiency, and so on.

If it’s working, continue doing it and get even better.

Which leaves the other 20% of your time and effort:

During this time, you should experiment with different tasks, approaches, and methods. This is your opportunity to do things differently, learn new skills, and find a new routine or habit that could potentially skyrocket your results!

Here’s the thing to keep in mind:

With this time, focus on one thing at a time.

As tempting as it is to try and change everything at once, resist this urge!

Let’s say you were to try 7 different routines at once for a month. You can see noticeable results from your experiments. You feel better, get better results and you can notice great improvements to your day to day life.

But…

Which of the 7 is responsible for the change?

That would be nearly impossible to tell!

Because of that reason, focus your 20% of effort on a single experiment for a few weeks. This way, you can see the results for yourself. And because you’re only changing one thing, it’s safe to say that the improvement came from the experiment you did!

Why Your Bad Habits Aren’t Your Bad Habits!

But, there is an even higher level of focus.

Let’s talk about bad habits for a moment.

When you hear me say bad habits, you might think of things like smoking, eating fast food, doom scrolling, a sedentary lifestyle, etc. Your mind might even hop to a specific bad habit that you have.

But those aren’t the biggest issues!

While I know that breaking bad habits is difficult, you have one HUGE advantage when it comes to these kinds of habits:

Awareness!

You already know that these are bad habits, so if you were to dig in and work on them, you can eliminate those bad habits from your life!

Note: You can watch my masterclass on breaking bad habits below. Or you can watch it on YouTube with that link. (It’s an extensive guide, so be warned)

Anyway…

Let’s talk about the real bad habits!

The real bad habits are the good ideas coming at a bad time.

Let me share how I fell victim to them:

When I first got into online business for myself, I was completely new to the industry and business in general. In order to educate myself, I watched a ton of videos, read a lot of blogs, and signed up for a ton of email lists.

I learned a lot from all that!

However, it destroyed my focus!

The problem was that there were many options to pick from:

• YouTube

• Blogging

• Affiliate marketing

• Freelancing

• Network Marketing

• Paid advertising

• Yadayadaya

My mistake was that I got stuck all the time!

Because I was new, I didn’t know how to make an opportunity work for me. It felt like there was an invisible wall between me and the success I desired…

When this happened, I would switch to new opportunities.

I would make a bit of initial progress but then I would get stuck again, because I lacked the required skills… And of course, young and stupid as I was, it never occurred to me that I was the problem rather than the opportunity.

The results?

I never made ANYthing work, because of my lack of focus!

Here’s what I want you to understand:

Focus means saying “No!” to a hundred good things so that you can say “Yes!” to that one amazing thing! At the highest level, focus means saying no to everything, except for the one thing you want to achieve!

No shiny objects getting in the way!

Think of it like resisting the “Woman in the Red Dress” from The Matrix.

Opportunities WILL come your way!

But… are they really opportunities?

Or just incredibly enticing distractions?

What I Would Tell My Younger Self

Do you ever wish you could go back in time to advise your younger self? To share lessons you had to learn the hard way? I know I do.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

So, instead of my former self, let me share these life lessons with you instead:

If you could go back in time to share advice, what would YOU say to yourself?

(You can reply to this email with your answer.)

Breaking Those Pesky Bad Habits!

Are bad habits swarming your life like a hurricane of mosquitos (Sharknado 2.0)? The video below will teach you everything you need to know to eliminate them and replace them with good habits!

Destroying the Toying

I’ve been thinking about what action steps would help you the most. After all, this angle of focus is highly personalized.

So, here’s what I would like you to think about today:

You’re obviously here because you are ambitious. And so, you probably have been toying with dozens of goals and dreams. I’m always a big fan of dreaming big, as long as you match your actions to them!

However…

You can do almost anything in life, but not everything!

For now, the exercise I’d urge you to do is to write down all of the different things that you have had. All the 19052 directions in which you could be sprinting, so to speak.

And then, cross out as many as possible!

Start eliminating as many of your good ideas as possible, so that you can focus on as few of your great ideas as you possibly can.

These will be some tough choices and conversations with yourself!

You’ll be drawing your line in the sand and saying once and for all that you will NOT do X, Y or Z! In doing so, you can get those ideas out of your head, so that you can get rid of that shiny object syndrome!

Focus on the few things that matter in life!