The last couple of weeks, I’ve had to address my focus, or lack thereof. Its something that I must constantly monitor within myself. Some moments are better than others. Inability to focus enough to be productive is one of my biggest challenges in my business and in life.

Focus on Multiple Things

It has always fascinated me how some people I have known have had only a few interests in life. Some have searched their lifetimes trying to find something they are truly passionate about. They are able to focus on a few things and be content.

Not me. I have had many interests and passions. I’m actually often overwhelmed by the options the universe has to offer. I’ve wanted to be involved in most of them, but unfortunately, I can’t do them all. As I get older, my interests and abilities in some things decrease, but my focus is still sometimes negatively impacted by my continued overwhelming number of interests.

Struggle with Focus

While I can focus on tasks for long periods of time, its a struggle. Even while writing this, my mind is full of stuff to write. I’m having fun doing it, but another part of me wants to go run outside, play golf, and learn some more about  aspects of internet marketing that I don’t know, run ads, play video games, finish a project I’m working on at my day job, and on and on.

I’m often fidgety when I must sit and focus. For example, I just noticed that in my seated position, my right foot is not flat on the ground, my toes and ball of my foot are touching, my leg is bent and I am using the floor to make my leg go rapidly up and down. I just rolled my shoulders back and forth; I just looked left, out onto the deck, then back to the screen. Its non-stop.

Blame it on Someone Else

I blame it on my mom and my environment growing up. While my mom has a law degree, it seems like she never saw a job she didn’t want to do. My daughters and I are still discovering jobs she had that we didn’t know about and things she has done. She always had me in activities as well, some that had me travel out of state and be active with a diverse set of people and environments.

Many of my friends growing up, both male and female, were multi-sport athletes. And so was I. In addition to sports, in school I often participated in club and academic activities before school, during lunch, and after school. Activities I was in often overlapped with one another, so that I was often having to choose which one to prioritize.

A Cup Overfloweth

In college at a tier 2 university and D1 in athletics, I attempted to carry 18-21 credits a semester, work, compete on the wrestling team, and party. If you are not familiar with what that means, it means I had an impossible schedule.

When I graduated and started working full-time, I often worked 55-60 hours, went to night school to get my MBA with 3 hour classes, trained an hour away to try and help a friend go to the Olympics for wrestling, competed in wrestling, coached high-school wrestling, played chess and competed in chess championships, trained in and competed in martial arts, and obtained two black belts in martial arts while training almost 7 days a week and traveling hours in different directions to two different schools.

When I stepped away from competing in wrestling, I helped mentor kids in a golfing program, and as a result, I golfed almost daily. I was an officer (President at one point) of a non-profit organization and was an avid gamer.

Impact of Focus Issues

Having issues focusing, including day-dreaming often, made it difficult in school. I was talented academically, but could never settle down enough to study enough. When I did take tests, my mind often wondered while taking the tests.  So I got Bs mostly instead of As. Sure, Bs aren’t bad, but As are what I wanted.

It likely affected my ability to stay in relationships. I found myself often moving through relationships quickly, looking for the next best one. It may have kept me from being an elite athlete. I was a really good athlete, but one of the differences I see that separates the elite from the really good is focus when it counts, both in and out of competition.

Focus Not as Bad as it Could be

Yet, through all of that, I have managed to focus enough to be very good at things. I think playing chess early on helped. You often have games that last a long time, and to be good, you often must concentrate enough to think many moves ahead.

You often must control your emotions, as losing is part of the game, especially in tournaments.  Goals, lists, and tracking my actions has helped. As much preparation as possible for important activities helps.

Traditional meditation so far is not for me, but I do pray from time to time and stop for brief moments to gather myself, assess how I’m doing and adjust based on what I conclude.

While I do fidget a lot and get antsy, I’m somehow also an even-keeled person which helps give me balance. Many around me have said that I am calm, cool, and collected. I try to follow my Father’s motto which was don’t sweat the small stuff. My resting heart rate when I was younger was in the low 40s, and now that I’m over 50, its still in the low 50’s, even though I am out of shape.

Focus Issues on the Business

In 2018, after a culmination of many years of searching for the right business, I went from not being able to find a business idea to finding one shiny object idea after another that I couldn’t resist.

My focus issues have led me to spend many $1,000s on programs and many hours listening and watching training videos. I used to say, Well, its for research so that I can find that one thing that I’m going to do when I retire. While I do think it takes time to learn what’s necessary to succeed in this business and who to trust and learn from, I could have saved time and money if I had been more narrowly focused. I have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, but its hard to keep up with all of them with the fast-paced changes throughout the world.

Missed Results

My most recent plans were to write blog posts often, especially until I got to my 50th one, to post on Facebook 3 times a day, to post on Quora daily, to send out 20–30 friend requests a day, reach out to people daily on Facebook to get leads, and gradually move to making videos.

In the last two weeks, my blog posts have dropped to one every other week, Quora posts once per week, Facebook posts once per day, and some days, no posts. I’m lucky if I send out 10 friend requests per day.

Solution Ideas

That’s a lot of talk about the issue and a lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda. What now? Well the first step is monitoring how I’m doing. I was doing that a bit, but I’m going to be a little bit more specific. I watched a training on the importance of targeting to determine how well you are doing. My targeting could be better, so I’m working on coming up with targets for many of my activities.

I monitored myself enough to know that I could do things better from a productivity standpoint. So, I asked Chat GPT, Claude AI, Gemini, and Copilot to give me some tips on productivity. Most of the tips I knew, but I saw a few I could use.

I thought the tips might be helpful for others, so I shared them on my Facebook business page and personal profile. The links will take you right to the posts.

Next, on an Excel spreadsheet, I listed the things I wanted to get done this weekend, including this blog post. I labeled what type of activities they were (e.g., Facebook, emails, funnels, blogs, personal finance, etc.). Then I categorized the activity based on whether it was related to health, revenue-generating activity, financial stability activity, and everything else, including home maintenance and support for the kids.

One of my mentors once had me focus on revenue generating activities. He provided me with a tool to help me track those activities. He is still sharing his productivity tools here. So I’m going to brush off the tool and use it to help monitor what I’m doing.

Solution Examples

Months ago, as I do sometimes, I made a very detailed weekly schedule of a wish list of what I wanted to accomplish, broken out into 15-minute increments. From that schedule, I created a much more relaxed schedule that is based on just the things I want to get done. I ranked the activities by priority.

Following the summary schedule wasn’t working for me. So, I decided to record what I did for the week, both in my day job and business, in 15-minute increments, to see my tendencies and where my accomplishment gaps were.

This will give me a more realistic view of what I can accomplish versus what I want to accomplish. I will use the results to help me adjust my wish list for the week.

Hope

Hopefully, implementing this plan will allow you to see more of me throughout the week. The ultimate goal is consistency, whatever it is.  I have a lot to say; I just need to figure out the best and most efficient way to share it.

If you have any tips on how to focus or have examples of where you struggle with focus, please share.