As a small business owner, one of the biggest challenges of growth is finding a way to block out the noise and focus on what truly matters. And until you figure out how to do this, you’ll never reach your full potential.
The Power of Focus in Business
We live in a world where ideas are cheap and accessible. This has produced a dangerous mindset and unhelpful culture where we feel a license to jump from one thing to the next. Even worse, we stack tasks one on top of the other until there’s no room for anything else.
Focus is to be valued in today’s culture. Business leaders who understand the value in silencing the noise and getting granular with their time, energy, and financial investments will win in the years to come.
5 Tips for Staying Focused
We’re not going to sit here and tell you that it’s easy to build a business – it’s not. But if you can learn how to block out the noise, you’ll stand a much better chance of gaining traction and transforming that momentum into results. Here are a few tips to help you get to this point:
- Strip Out Time-Wasters
Grab a pen and jot down the top five time-wasting tasks and habits in your life. Examples include watching Netflix, scrolling through social media, playing video games, or investing in a toxic relationship.
If you’re having trouble zeroing in on where you’re wasting your time, pull up your phone’s screen time report. You may be surprised to discover how much time you waste on frivolous applications and tasks each week.
Now choose three of these time-wasters and completely eviscerate them. If Netflix is one of them, this means canceling your subscription. If it’s video games, try selling your console. Get serious about removing these distractions from your life. Otherwise, they’ll continue to prevent you from focusing on the things that really matter.
- Silence Distractions
One of the more challenging parts of staying focused is figuring out a way to fight through all of the interruptions that intersect our daily routines. Notifications are a great example of this. If you want to be more focused, put your phone on silent for large chunks of the day. This eliminates the ringing and dinging of text and email notifications, which can zap your focus and draw it away from more critical tasks.
- Find Your ‘One Thing’
Do you ever feel like you bounce around from one idea to the next? One week you’re dead-set on email marketing. The next week it’s starting a blog. Then it’s podcasting. Then you become convinced that you need to try your hand at a newfound marketing funnel strategy. But at the end of the day, all of your half-baked ideas add zero value to your business.
“Imagine what you could achieve if you put all of your focus into one thing and not stopping until that one thing had become a success,” entrepreneur Gary Henderson writes. “Sure, it might take all of your focus and concentration, but it’s worth it when you have great ideas and the willingness to achieve what you want to achieve. Only move on to your next task when you’re ready.”
Take this week to find your “one thing.” Then spend the next several weeks (or however long it takes) chasing down that one idea with everything you’ve got. You’ll notice a huge difference in your focus and results.
- Set and Track Goals
It’s hard to stay focused if you don’t know what you’re aiming for. That’s why we recommend using a platform like Google Analytics to set and track specific goals. This will give your vision clarity and allow you to see what’s working. (Better yet, set up a daily or weekly email report so that you get regular updates on how you’re tracking toward your goals.)
- Learn to Delegate
Every moment you spend working in your business is one moment less you have to work on your business. Become comfortable with the idea of handing tasks off to other people.
“Put the right people in place and learn to delegate,” entrepreneur Jonathan Long writes. “When this is done correctly you end up with the right people handling the day-to-day duties, allowing you to focus on growth.”
Once you learn where to spend your time, an entirely new world of opportunities emerge for you and your business.
Block Out the Noise
There’s more noise in the marketplace than ever before. If you aren’t careful, this noise can make it difficult to focus on a single voice or strategy. By implementing a few of the tips discussed above, you should find it easier to get results. Let us know which ones work for you!
