Focus on what matters to find success

Focus

One question I’ve been asking myself lately is, how productive can you really claim to be if you’re not seeing results from your work?

Being motivated is great, and finding yourself putting a lot of rubber to the road is even better, but it doesn’t mean shit if you’re not focused.

I’ve been learning that the hard way.

Tom Mcfarlin recently wrote a great article on the latest and greatest technologies, where he touched on the urge to learn a bunch of different coding languages.

I’ve personally experienced this urge many times, and indeed, the struggle is real.

I’ve built a life on WordPress so do I really want to learn python, ruby or any of the seemingly endless variations of JavaScript frameworks that there are out there?

What about encryption technology?

I strongly support the encryption of absolutely everything, and would love to contribute to – or create – a project that helps people secure their communications and information.

But the question isn’t how much would I love to do this? The real question is do I have time to learn cryptography, and everything else that goes into a strong encryption setup?, and the answer is absolutely not.

The ADHD I feel on a daily basis makes it easy to stretch myself too thin, dabbling in things that really don’t matter to my main goals in the long run.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

Personally, I have a specific plan in mind for the next year, and while there are a lot of cool new technologies emerging, they’re just distractions from my main goal and focus.

Having a general knowledge of different technologies, frameworks and other cool shit is great, but if it’s not furthering your business goals, it’s just a distraction.

Finding Success

I haven’t had a 9-5 job in about a decade, and while I believe this is a great accomplishment, I have struggled a lot during this time.

There’s been a lot of ups and even more downs.

Something I’ve come to realize when looking back on the last 10 years is that I’ve not had the focus that I should have had in order to attain the level of success I desperately want.

Sure, I could blame it on ADHD – I know the teachers in my high school used to – but I personally feel like that’s just been a cop out for an even bigger problem.

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee

Learning how to put the blinders on and let the extra bullshit go, be it tools and technologies or other mental distractions in your life, is one of the surest ways to reach the goals you’ve set for yourself.

Knowing that there is one goal, and every action you take puts you one step closer to reaching it. These thoughts are what reinforce your drive for success, and this is something I’ve been coming to grips with lately.

I’ve spent far too long being distracted by stupid shit and letting it knock me off my path. Finding the strength to focus on one specific goal has been tough, but the results will be well worth the effort.

With my business – and your business – we cannot be Amazon or Wal-Mart.

Being everything to everyone will get us nowhere. Instead, we need to focus on what we do best and get better at it.

Every. Fucking. Day.

Becoming an expert

The words “full stack developer” get thrown around a lot lately. If you look at job listings, I bet that 8 out of 10 times you’ll see these words in the description.

While it can be great to be skilled in multiple languages, look at who’s asking for it as a job requirement – businesses looking to hire employees.

But that’s not what I want to be, and I highly doubt you want to work 40 hours a week for someone else either.

So how can we ensure that we’re as successful as possible when it comes to our own personal goals and dreams?

Laser-like focus.

The deeper you dive into one tool or technology, the stronger your abilities become, and in turn you are able to position yourself as an expert with in the specific field.

When you become an expert, your stock rises and the ability to charge more money for your services becomes easier.

You’ll also open yourself up to additional opportunities like writing a book, building a course to teach others how to do what you are an expert at, and so on.

You can’t do those things when you’re just another cog in the machine.

I mean, you could, but your chances of success are much lower.

That’s just not acceptable to me, so I’m putting my full force into one specific task and working as hard as humanly possible to become an expert and find the success I know that I deserve.

… and it all starts with focus.

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