Why is focus so important? – 7 good reasons

American entrepreneurs Warren Buffett and Bill Gates built two of the most influential companies on the planet on their own. While Buffett is considered the most successful investor of all time,  there would be neither Microsoft Windows nor Word, PowerPoint or Excel without Bill Gates. Both have not only been among the richest people in the world for decades, but also among the most generous and effective philanthropists of our time. With their help, major successes have been achieved in combating dangerous childhood diseases such as polio and measles, they donated the majority of their wealth to charitable causes and have convinced no fewer than 204 other billionaires to do the same. [1] [1] Philanthropic Billionaires: Pledge Signatories (2010) The Giving Pledge

In 1991, these two extremely intelligent gentlemen were asked independently about their most important success factor. Both answered with just one word: "Focus". [2] [2] The success factor of Bill Gates & Warren Buffett: Serenity Stocks (2006) One word that accounted for Bill Gates’ and my success: Focus This was not about focusing the reflex camera or the well-known news magazine. Rather, focus describes the ability to identify the most important thing in your life and concentrate your attention precisely on it. 

So focus on what really matters. Direct your focus on your most important goals. It actually sounds quite simple, doesn't it? But if it were so easy, why do so few people do it?

Focus in the age of distraction

When Gates and Buffett were asked about their greatest success factor 30 years ago, focus was still much easier to achieve than today. Back then, there were nowhere near as many distractions: personal computers were an absolute rarity and the internet was known at best from science fiction movies. Amazon had not yet sold a single product, it would still take 15 years until the founding of Facebook and the word "smartphone" didn't even exist. Today, in the age of constant stimulation and information overload, your attention is constantly being pulled. And even if no one is pulling at it from the outside, it is easier than ever to lose your focus, because every distraction is just one click away.

Focus is not only incredibly valuable because it has become a rare unicorn, but also because your attention determines your reality. What you habitually perceive or ignore shapes who you are and who you will become. Your focus ultimately also determines your success and happiness. The following seven reasons explain why focus is so important:

1. Focus makes you more successful

Whether you want to leave a dent in the universe, become self-employed with an online crochet course, get promoted or lose five kilos – every form of success is subject to the so-called 80/20 principle.

The 80/20 principle is a universal law that is as real as the law of gravity. It is not about the exact ratio of 80 to 20, but rather that only a very small part of the total effort is always responsible for the majority of the results: 20% of a company's products account for 80% of the profits. [3] [3]  20% of all products account for 80% of all profits: Steffan, Belinda (2008) Essential Management Accounting: How to Maximise Profit and Boost Financial Performance 20% of all websites generate 80% of all online traffic. [4] [4] 80% of online traffic is concentrated on 20% of all websites: Koch, Richard (2013) The 80/20 Principle and 92 Other Powerful Laws of Nature: The Science of Success. In almost all companies, 20% of the employees are responsible for 80% of the revenue. [5] [5] 20% of employees account for 80% of all revenue: 50 Minutes (2015) Pareto's Principle: Expand your business with the 80/20 rule. And you too achieve 80% of your results in 20% of your time. 

If you focus your time on the 20% of tasks that bring you significantly closer to your goal than the rest, you achieve more in less time. [6] [6] Frugal use of time:
Jason Fried in Signal v. Noise (2008) Forbes misses the point of the 4-day work week For example, if you have a to-do list with ten tasks, then one or two of them are more valuable and important than all the others combined – and this applies even if all ten tasks take the same amount of time.

In the world of success, only a very few, selected efforts are always responsible for the majority of the results and rewards. That is why big dreams and projects rarely need more time. They need more focus.

2. Focus makes your life easier

If you look closely, you can observe the unequal ratio of effort to results in almost all areas of your life. Only a very few things are always responsible for your happiness and well-being, while the majority is comparatively useless:

• Relationships: Which 20% of the people you spend time with account for 80% of your well-being?
• Nutrition: Which 20% of all foods make up 80% of your diet?
• Household: Which 20% of your tidying effort makes your home look 80% tidy?
• Property: Which 20% of your wardrobe do you wear 80% of the time ?
  

The answers to these questions are not that difficult for you, are they? As soon as you have answered them in peace, you can do what a professional tidying coach would do for your wardrobe. You get rid of what brings you no added value, and consistently focus on exactly the things and people that are good for you. You declutter your life and make it easier.

When you let go of something, you are a little happier. When you let go of a lot, you are much happier. When you let go completely, you are free. – Ajahn Chah

3. Focus helps you say "No

Focus is the ability to identify the most important thing in your life and concentrate your attention on it. Even if this definition seems boring, it already contains an interesting insight: To focus on one thing, you must simultaneously ignore many other things – and for that you have to say "No" very often.

But how often do you say "Yes" in everyday life, even though you would rather have said "No"? How much more space would you have for your own needs and dreams if you said "No" more often?

The clearer your focus is, the easier it will be for you to deny all other options. In a world of unlimited possibilities and limited time, saying "No" is basically nothing other than saying "Yes" to yourself.

What you don't do determines what you can do. – Tim Ferriss

4. Focus creates deeper relationships

When I lived in Bangkok six years ago, I was greatly surprised how cheap and fast the mobile internet is there. In Germany, you still paid €30 for one gigabyte of data volume back then, while in Bangkok you received 20 gigabytes for the same price. During my one-year stay, a disadvantage of cheap internet repeatedly caught my eye: Because most people were mentally more with their phone than with the person in front of them, an incredible number of conversations revolved around trivialities – and only scratched the outermost surface. We don't have the best conversations of our lives when we briefly check emails, follow like clicks  or "just quickly look" to see if there is anything new.

With the right focus, you tune in completely to the person who is important to you right now. This is how you deepen friendships and relationships that are close to your heart, because you give your conversation partner not only more time, but also consciously your undivided attention. 

5. Focus ensures more productivity & flow

Multitasking only works if one of the activities is an absolute routine process that our brain can run in its sleep. In all other cases, multitasking – contrary to widespread opinion – does not achieve more, but even only half as much and makes twice as many mistakes in the process. [7] [7] 3 seconds of distraction double the error rate: Altmann, E. / Henion, A. / McGlashen, A. Michigan State University Today (2013) Brief Intet

rruptions Spawn Errors Multitasking not only results in a greatly increased stress level [8] [8] Multitasking leads to stress: Mark, Gloria CHI (2014) Stress and multitasking in everyday college life: An empirial study of online activity but also makes us even less effective than a sleepless night before a workday. [9] [9] Multitasking is less effective than a sleepless night: Loder, Vanessa in forbes.com (2014) Why Multi-Tasking Is Worse Than Marijuana For Your IQ So if you try to do everything at once, you end up not really accomplishing anything.

Who hunts two hares at once will catch neither. – Confucius

If you deliberately focus on one task, you accomplish twice as much as when trying to multitask. In addition, you increase the probability of getting into the notorious "flow". In this, we get so absorbed in our activity that we can fulfil it with full dedication and often do not feel how time passes. This state of highest concentration not only makes you more productive and creative, but also happier. [10] [10] Flow makes us more productive, creative and happier: Killingsworth, Mark in ted.com (2011): Want to be happier? Stay in the moment

6. Focus reduces unnecessary negativity

Our brain acts like a sponge for bad things and a non-stick coating for good things. That is why a broken heart hurts more than a fulfilled heart brings joy. And that is why the pain of losing something is on average three to four times stronger than the feeling of happiness in possessing it. [11] [11] Bad is perceived more intensely than good: Baumeister, Roy F./Bratslavsky, Ellen/Finkenauer, Catrin/Vohs, Kathleen Review of General Psychology, Issue 5 (2001) Bad is stronger than good To outsmart Mother Nature, we must therefore proactively do what is not in our nature – namely, place the focus on progress and the good (around us and in us).

Whether worries or fears, reports of terror, natural disasters and the coronavirus, more or less sensible social media posts, or stress at work: If you do not consciously place the focus on the positive, the negative lands unchecked in your field of perception.

In our small publishing house, for example, there are no problems, but only "disguised opportunities". Every time someone uses the word "problem" instead of "disguised opportunity", that person has to buy something for the team to snack on. This may sound a bit radical, but it trains the brain to place the focus on progress and solutions, instead of getting bogged down in problems.

You cannot carve the situations in your life, but you can carve the attitude that fits the situations. – Zig Ziglar

7. Focus creates clarity

The values list in the 6-Minute-Success Journal, the daily planner for more mindfulness and focus

Now you have read so much about focus, but what is actually yours? What desires drive you from within? What do you really want? This question is not that easy to answer when external demands are constantly raining down on us: Such as ideas about what you must have achieved by what age, how you should dress, what is healthy, cool and "right". We make an average of 20,000 decisions a day [12] [12] We make 20,000 decisions daily: Thomas, Cliff (2019) An Examination Of Decision-Making During Organizational Crises: A Case Study Of The 2017 Northern California Firestorm and with all the opinions and possibilities we are confronted with daily, it is no wonder that we regularly lose our focus.

The safest way to maintain focus despite all the external influences is clarity about your …drumroll... values. Clarity about your personal values, however, needs more than the quick test in the latest tabloid magazine, where you find out after just one page that "love" is really important to you – and beyond that, eleven more values like "health" or "recognition". But if 12 values are important to you at the same time, then in the end there is no real priority.

The same applies here: Focus makes your life easier. If you manage to focus on a few core values – no more than five – they act as a compass for your everyday life. You can consult the compass again and again to decide how you want to spend your limited time. And so it keeps bringing you back on track.

So, what now?

You can probably already guess the answer: The most important thing is to sit down and think about what is most important to you :-)

We can offer you two practical ideas for this:

1. A long-term focus aid: 6-Minute-Success Journal

Do you know what the major focus was in our small publishing house in 2019? The development of the 6-Minute-Success Journal.

As luck would have it, this is a journal that helps you define your deepest values and thus discover what truly drives you. Then it helps you to focus on them day after day. Here you can take a look at it.

2. An initial focus aid: Online Values Test

You take a comprehensive values test and thus get an initial indication of which values could be your focus values. This test here takes about an hour, is also available in German, and we can wholeheartedly recommend it.

With that in mind: Have fun focusing!

____________________

This post is by Dominik Spenst, founder of the 6-Minuten-Verlag, author of the 6-Minute-Diary and the 6-Minute-Success Journal. When he is not writing 6-Minute-Journals, he browses non-fiction books or praises his employees so inconspicuously that they don't notice.

Sources:

[1] Philanthropic Billionaires: Pledge Signatories (2010): The Giving Pledge

[2] The success factor of Bill Gates & Warren Buffett: Serenity Stocks (2006) One word that accounted for Bill Gates’ and my success: Focus

[3]  20% of all products account for 80% of all profits: Steffan, Belinda (2008) Essential Management Accounting: How to Maximise Profit and Boost Financial Performance

[4] 80% of online traffic is concentrated on 20% of all websites: Koch, Richard (2013) The 80/20 Principle and 92 Other Powerful Laws of Nature: The Science of Success

[5] 20% of employees account for 80% of all sales 50 Minutes (2015): Pareto‘s Principle: Expand your business with the 80/20 rule

[6] Frugal use of time: Jason Fried in Signal v. Noise (2008) Forbes misses the point of the 4-day work week

[7] 3 seconds of distraction double the error rate: Altmann, E. / Henion, A. / McGlashen, A. Michigan State University Today (2013) Brief Interruptions Spawn Errors

[8] Multitasking leads to stress: Mark, Gloria CHI (2014) Stress and multitasking in everyday college life: An empirial study of online activity

[9] Multitasking is less effective than a sleepless night: Loder, Vanessa in forbes.com (2014) Why Multi-Tasking Is Worse Than Marijuana For Your IQ

[10] Flow makes us more productive, creative, and happy: Killingsworth, Mark in ted.com (2011) Want to be happier? Stay in the moment

[12] We make 20,000 decisions daily: Thomas, Cliff (2019) An Examination Of Decision-Making During Organizational Crises: A Case Study Of The 2017 Northern California Firestorm