Focus or Flurry? Busy But Why Aren’t You Getting Anywhere?

Posted on by

Focus or Flurry – Too Busy

Non-stop from the moment you get up until it’s time to put your head on the pillow. Personal and professional schedules often overlap. You spend a good amount of time driving from location to location. Sometimes you cut activities short in order to rush on to the next one. When you are ready for bed you are totally exhausted and can’t seem to catch up on rest.

You probably know someone like this. You may BE someone like this. It is tell-tale symptoms of someone who is too busy.

There is nothing wrong with being busy. Busy keeps us active and keeps us from wasting time focusing on the negatives of our lives. It’s not being busy that is the issue, it’s HOW we are being busy. Are we busy with things that are targeted or are we simply busy with activities? Busyness that is not targeted and purpose-driven can lead to a distinct feeling of emptyness. We are so busy that we must be getting somewhere, but why does it still feel incomplete. Our busyness has no real meaning. We spend our time in flurry.

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Socrates

“It is not enough to be busy. Even the ants do that. The question is: what are we busy about?”
Henry David Thoreau

Not sure if you are one of those who are too busy? Here are 7 signs that you are too busy:

You are always surviving. You can’t remember what open time on your calendar looked like or the last time you were ahead of schedule.
Meals coincide or overlap with other events. If you don’t have time to sit down and simply enjoy a little family meal time or quiet meal time, that’s definitely a sign.
You tend to be tired even in the mornings. You can get rest from all the flurry.
You can’t remember the last time you read a book.
You have interruptions to your interruptions.
You cannot consistently set aside a time-frame for a specific activity, like exercise.
You do not engage in intentional, daily growth

Focus or Flurry – Making the Change

We must make the transformation from being too busy to being productively busy. We have to move from flurry to focus. And it starts with the decision to do so. You must resolve that you are tired of being tired, you are fed up with not getting where you want to be. It doesn’t solve your problems, but it helps provide the resolve you are going to need to implement this.

Action Plan

Create calendar blocks. Each block should be at least an hour preferably but certainly no less than 30 minutes each. You won’t need to block every waking moment, you are simply trying to make sure that you set aside specific activity blocks. You will protect these blocks ruthlessly, letting nothing short of real emergencies (spurting blood, sinkholes, hurricanes, earthquakes) get in the way. You need these blocks labelled on your daily calendar:

Spiritual Time. I call this devotional time but you can call it what you want. The point is you need daily time dedicated to developing your spiritual life. This helps make everything else better, it is THAT critical. Ideally, this is your first block of the day. Get up earlier if need be to have time for it. I find that’s what works best for me, before everyone else gets up to have my devotional time. If you have kids, it’s even better to let them see you engaged in this daily as it also encourages them to develop the habit.
Hard Time. This block is set aside for doing things you know you need to do that day but avoid and postpone until it is too late to do them. Set aside time for it and strictly do not allow yourself to do anything else during that time frame until the hard thing is done.
Personal Growth Time. A block designed for you to intentionally grow yourself. Remember my 1% rule: if you simply grow yourself intentionally by 1% a day you will see exponential results.
Reading Time. Do nothing but read. Magazines or trade journals, books, white papers. Do not spend this time on the newspaper or social media. We want reading time that feeds us.
Me Time. A block where no one else but you is your concern. Do whatever you want as long as it isn’t for someone else. You need this for your sanity and balance.

One Thing – Why Being Busy Isn’t Necessarily Being Effective

Posted on by

The Wisdom of Curly: One Thing

One of the scenes practically everyone remembers from the movie City Slickers is when Curly (played by Jack Palance) is talking with Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) about his view on life. The following conversation ensues:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? [holds up index finger] This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean s***.

Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.

Curly, the old cowhand, knew it while the radio executive had not yet figured it out.

[SPOILER ALERT] Eventually he does.

Busy Lives without that One Thing

What’s your schedule like? Is it filled with focus or filled with events? We book our calendar with things to do and it is typically a wide variety of things. We may support a variety of non-profit organizations, take the kids here and there to piano lessons, dance class, Scout meetings, football or baseball practice, soccer, lacrosse. We have committee meetings at church, the house needs straightening up, we have meetings in the office, a lunch appointment, gotta fix dinner, gotta check our Facebook page, gotta scan the news, attend a webinar we heard was good. Somewhere in there we may decide to say hello to our Significant Other and then watch a little (or a lot) of TV. What’s our One Thing?

We are busy, but are we really getting where we want to go? Are we getting the most out of the moment? Are we learning to focus our energy?

One Thing We Are Gifted For

The urgent message behind the Wisdom of Curly is that ONE THING. To be truly effective, to utilize more of our potential, we must focus on the one thing that truly fills us. It is the thing we were created for. We were particularly and UNIQUELY gifted for this one thing and somewhere deep inside of us is a passion for the one thing. The two must coincide; you cannot be gifted for something without having a passion for it. It may have been suppressed or even trained out of you by your environment, but deep inside you is that passion for that ONE THING!

If you really want to get the most out of your life, you must draw more focus onto that ONE THING. If you know what it is, you must devote more resources to developing it and exploiting it (exploiting in this case is a good thing). If you don’t know what it is, you need to spend time searching and finding it.

“What?!” you say, “find time for SOMETHING ELSE to do? I just don’t have any more time!”

You don’t have to time to NOT do it! Anything else, if you are not leveraging your ONE THING, is wasted effort.

Focus Not Flurry

The secret, I believe, is in Focus and Not Flurry. Stop being caught up in a never-ending flurry of activity and start being concentrated on establishing or optimizing that ONE THING. Now, some busy things in life are unavoidable; shopping still needs to get done, meals still need to be cooked, some meetings are inevitable, charities still need our help (although this could use focus too), and the kids still need to go places. But the last two are good examples of flurry instead of focus. I see many people get involved in a wide variety of charitable activities, dabbling here and there but never really digging in to one. Pick ONE, maybe two at the most, and focus your energy on serving them as best you can.

Additionally, in our earnest ambition to give our kids the best opportunity to succeed, we overbook them in an expanse of activities that we end up investing a lot of time and money into and become a shuttle for moving them around from place to place. And so, we ingrain in them also the mindset of FLURRY instead of FOCUS. They become a jack of all trades and we wonder why they don’t settle down and DO SOMETHING as they get older. They have had no time to develop a real passion for anything before we moved them on to the next conquest. They need exactly what we need: FOCUS NOT FLURRY.

They need that ONE THING.

You need that ONE THING.

Go get it!

Action Plan

Do you know what your ONE THING is? If not, start today to identify it. Seek help from a coach. They can help you identify strengths and passions that may be hidden.
If you know your ONE THING, decide on something you will do daily to work on it.

Focus to Create Hot Moments

Posted on by

Magnified Focus

When I was a child, we used to take our magnifying glass outside and in the hot Florida sun we would hold it up and see the light shining through it on the ground below. If we then moved it about we could focus that light into a single beam that would then start to burn a blade of grass or an ant. The focus was the difference.

Note to parents: if you are concerned that a kid who might read this has been suddenly given a way to perpetrate mischief, I got news for you; they already know this and if they don’t will soon discover it on their own. I did.

Refracted light illuminates. It can brighten and reveal. It can even offer a low-level of heat. This is both beneficial and productive. Try reading or performing open heart surgery in the dark. Try finding anything small that you dropped on the ground. You likely won’t find it until you are able to provide ambient light to reveal its location. Refracted light reveals but doesn’t empower.

Focused light provides power and heat and intensity. Sunlight gathered by panels gets focus and turns into electrical power. A laser in very simple terms is focused light. Apply enough focus to the light and it provides intense and powerful energy. The focus is the difference.

Your Laser Focus and the HOT MOMENT

When your energies get refracted, poured out all over the place, you may get illumination but you won’t get power. It is not until you focus your energies on a particular point that you are able to unlock the intensity and power; that you are able to generate a HOT MOMENT. The focus is the difference.

When we can create a HOT MOMENT, we build intensity and energy and power. It drives us forward and isn’t easily stopped or even slowed down by anything that gets in the way. We need momentum to keep us on track and on focus. Once we lose focus, we lose momentum and the HOT MOMENT is gone.

To create a HOT MOMENT, identify your target. Without a target, there is no focus. A target must be very specific. Identify what success is for that target. Is it a deadline reached, value-added to a person or group, a product sold, a goal reached? Once you have the target, funnel all your energy on it. It doesn’t have to be for long periods of time; a laser accomplishes a lot even in just short bursts. The focus is the difference. Act immediately, don’t wait to “feel like it” or for the “right moment”. The right moment comes when you create it; you will feel like it after you start doing it. Act now and put all your energy into it and ride the HOT MOMENT for as long as you can. Reward yourself for accomplishment.

Action Plan

What one thing requires your focus this week?
What does success mean for that thing? How will you reward yourself for achieving it?
Personally brainstorm for 10 minutes on ways you can dedicate more energy on that thing.
What is the HOT MOMENT you can create through this?