The Seventh Deadly Sin

As a young child one of my favorite activities during the spring time was sitting on the front stoop of our house and just closing my eyes and soaking in the sun. I enjoyed the way that the sun would warm the steps and the feeling on my face after enduring the harsh coldness of winter. I thought that I could sit on those steps for hours, until of course my focus would shift to more pressing matters that might concern a child of six or seven.

One of those things I seemed to spend a lot of time doing then was trying to start fires. This was not your child playing in the house with matches sort of thing, but rather I would try to burn leaves or grass with my magnifying glass. I would be so excited when I could cause a leaf to begin to smoke with the focused power of the sun. And like most kids, I would sometimes point that focus on my skin just to see how it felt. Those same sun rays that I enjoyed on my face were not so enjoyable when focused to a pinpoint through my magnifying glass. It took only seconds for the rays to burn the skin and I would always jerk my hand back in total surprise as though I had not done this before.

Those days on the front stoop taught me much about the power of focused energy. My simple experiment taught me of the destructive power of focus, but today we know how the focused power of light through lasers brings vast benefits to our modern society. In fact today the power of focused laser beams can even improve the vision of a guy like me.

We readily recognize the benefits of focus. All of us have said at one time or another that we really need to focus to get things done. What we may not realize however is the high price of failing to focus. A recent article in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal talked about failing to focus. It named failure to focus as the seventh deadly sin and accounts such failure as one of the seven reasons that Carly Fiorina was ousted at Hewlett Packard. In short, they believe that Carly lost her job because she took on too many tasks. The result was that her lack of focus caused her not to be able to achieve her company’s priorities.

We seem to worship the superman or superwoman syndrome in our society. We admire those that have it all, or want it all. But the fact is that you just can’t do it all. We advocate “to do” lists and we have countless “yellow stickies” posted everywhere. Perhaps you even have a “some day maybe” list for those things that you might get to do some day. These may well be excellent tools to remind us of tasks unfinished, but they speak to a lack of focused energy.

I read a book a few years ago that established the four “Ds” of focused activity. They are as follows:

Dump It – just say no to certain activities

Delegate it – Determine if someone else might be better at doing a task than you

Defer it – Things you need to do but not right now. Schedule these things

Do it - Things to do right now which are your most important projects

Another recommendation is to limit even your to do list. One thought on this is to limit your list to no more than two or three things. The mind begins to wander when too many choices are available. When your list is too long, you will tend to focus on activities that are not necessarily the most important, but rather the easiest. I recommend the list of three. You can be very clear about your priorities when the list is short. Now before you scoff at this idea, let me say that I know you have more than three things to do. You may have a hundred things to do. But let’s be real folks, right now you are not doing any of them. So why not do just three? Get an index card and write down three things that you will do today. No more than three and no less than three. Start on the first thing on the list first. When the list is done, you throw away the card and make a new list. Think of the opportunities to celebrate and throw your hands in the air as you rip up the completed list. Focus brings success.

Using the power of focus you can identify your priorities. Your priorities are the things that you promised yourself or others that you would do. These are your main things and you must always keep the main things the main thing.

So right now, before you move to another blog or your next task, take out a card and write your list. Focus will get things done, but take an example from Carly, a lack of focus can be deadly.