Focus is a word I have learned a great deal about in the past couple of years. For the past seven years I have been a consultant working at a variety of companies, writing for ProjectConnections, working on a variety of conferences, serving on the boards of a couple non profits, and even starting up a couple of different businesses. Not to mention writing a book, being a husband and father, and caring for a 15 acre “ranch” that includes several horses, dogs, and cats. Needless to say, I had a lot of irons in the fire.

The ironic thing is the more things that were on my plate, the more things I tended to add. While it seemed counterintuitive I was falling into the trap that many have fallen into – thinking that we are most effective when we are really busy. I was involved in a lot of things I enjoyed, but by having so many things going on, I was not paying enough attention to any of them. I was doing what I needed to get done, but I did not feel terribly satisfied with any of the results I was doing.

Last July I realized that I needed to follow my own advice that I often sited when talking about project prioritization - Get More Done By Doing Less. By focusing on a limited few activities at one time, you can actually get things accomplished quicker and then move on to the next item. Once it hit me that I should eat my own dog food as it were, I started to scale back on my activities. It was difficult to choose which activities to scale back on – I had to think about what I felt was most important in my life and keep the activities that best supported those high priority items. At this point in my life spending quality time with my wife and daughter, and pursuing activities that supported our ability to have quality time took precedence over everything else. Using that criteria, I was able to identify which activities I should continue to do and which ones I would have to stop. The decisions were not necessarily easy, but they were necessary if I wanted to be in a position to get results I could be happy about.

Here are a few key points that I learned about focus from my experiences that apply to organizing your project work:

• Understand what is truly important to your organization and use that as the key input to decisions about what to do and not do.

• Apply focus to the results you are trying to achieve instead of the tasks you use to get there. In other words, organizations often have people assigned to multiple projects because they have very narrowly defined roles. While it may be easier to hire people to meet these narrow role descriptions, it often results in more people working on a project than is practical and can often result in bottlenecks.

• Once you have put yourself in a position where you are focused, don't get distracted and start adding more to your plate. Its better to spend that extra time on the task at hand so that you can complete it before moving on to the next thing.

• If you decide to not do activities or projects, don't think of it as never, think of it as not right now.

• If you find yourself making decisions about activities that you are not going to continue, make sure you end those activities in a way that does not burn bridges. You never know when you finish the activities that decided to do and will have an opportunity to do the others you chose to defer.

Related Links
Capture critical personal goals, prioritize them, and develop personal action plans aligned with those priorities using this worksheet. Find out where all your time goes, on or off the job, using this simple time management assessment log. Confronted with an unexpected loss, Mike Aucoin urges us to take serious stock of our most important Project … but not to take it too seriously.

Comments

I wholeheartedly agree with your approach. Adrenaline and pressure can keep us going for a while, but in the end it is a strong focus that allows us to realize true success. Being a team leader requires an even greater focus, not only for ourselves, but also for those we manage. The adage, "if you chase two rabbits both will escape" is appropriate for many aspects of life.

Very true. After reading Stephen Covey's "First things first" I started using "Roles in life" to ensure a balance between family, community, work. I get a better balance but am still too busy! Kent is right about working out the priorities and the success criteria. Life is just a project really - we need to manage the scope!

Absolutely! I too have experienced those times in my life where I had too many things going on at once and couldn't really do any of them well. In fact, as I write this, I have a new job, am finishing up my Master's degree, and lead a volunteer program involving 25+ volunteers and ~40 participants. This counts as one of those times in my life! Thanks for the reminder of prioritizing not only in our project outcomes but also in our lives!