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I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) British poet and playwright.



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Photo courtesy of Colors of my dreams

I’m sure that you’ve known the rule of 80/20. As a matter of fact, everything we do in life is being influenced by its domino effect.

Enter the world of hacks and anti-hacks alike, with due respect to the arguments from either side of the fence, I’ve stumbled upon an axiom that can bring back your lost focus and productivity in life full of priorities.

Here is the axiom that, once ingrained in your mind, can bring laser sharp focus to bring mammoth success in your life.

We focus 80% of our time on 20% of meager matters in our life that, if happens, will only have 5% influence on the outcome.

I’m sure that this is a shocking revelation. The cognizance of what matters most for a sustained, viable and balanced growth of our body, mind and soul relies upon applying this touchstone to every thought that ever enters to our brain.

When I hear phrases - “,I’d love to do that but _,” or “I’m too busy to have fun”, I ponder in disbelief that secret of focus, as simple as it is, is far away as shiny stars to those who have failed to understand this simple axiom.

It’s shocking what happens to the quality of your life when you put your thoughts into proper perspective. All of a sudden, things that seemed so big seem small and things that seemed so small, things we procrastinated and taken for granted, seem so big ! It’s almost as if gaining lost vision with new perspective about life. With rejuvenated focus, we see that, for the most part, we usually prioritize in reverse order. Nevertheless, we can change all of that in a moment. We can make a shift without delay.

Time is infinitely more precious than money, and there is nothing common between them. You cannot accumulate time, you cannot borrow time; you can never tell how much time you have left in the Bank of Life. Time is Life…
- Israel Davidson

On Worries -

We worry about things that are not in our control. By focusing on worries that may never see daylight, we tend to exhaust our time, energy and obviously focus on what lies ahead. Years ago, I flew from Atlanta to San Francisco. I noticed a woman sitting beside me with a pale face. Shortly after the take off, the captain announced that weather may get rough and there is a chance of turbulence in our way. All of a sudden, this quiet woman started screaming. I was bemused since I’d never been through such a horrible situation before. I tried to ask her what has happened to her. She kept screaming harder. After a long and frightening ordeal, crew members found out that she was simply worried about the plane crashing as a result of the word turbulence being mentioned by the captain. She was worried about, if any, 20 percent chance of a bad weather causing remote 5 percent chance of a turbulence. As you can imagine, it never happened.

On Business -

Business can pose challenges that are meager yet if we zoom in on them, they can take all the wind out of our brain. Last year, I had to replace the roof at one of my hotels. After prudent selection, I decided to go with a contractor who was most qualified for the job. Next three days, I battled in my mind over whether I should go with 30 years architectural shingles or 50 year architectural shingles. What if I own this hotel after 30 years ? Wouldn’t it be wise to go for the 50 years shingles ? It will give peace of mind. Thinking back, now I realize how fool I was to even fret over a subject that has 20 percent or less chance of me owning this hotel after 30 years. Even if that happens, there is less than 5 percent chance of the same roof to survive on that hotel after 30 years. I suppose you get the cue. I’d lost focus and precious time as well.

On goals -

While focusing on goals, it is rather important to identify the expected results that you visualize and write them down on the paper. If you do not visualize the expected outcome and deadline, you may squabble over actions that are meager at best in terms of achieving the goal. For example, years ago, during the dot com boom, I developed an auction site with sleepless nights and days of programming. I, along with two other friends, was excited to have a piece of history that eBay was destined to reign. However, during the development, I started spending excessive time on the look and feel of the site rather than getting the functionality and start marketing the site. Soon, we lost focus as a team over look and feel that had, at best, 20 percent chance of providing any competitive advantage and even if so, the same look and feel would have had 5 percent or less impact on the fate of our business model. Needless to say, our auction site never hosted any auctions ever.

On Clutter -

It’s essential to get organized to cleanse our surroundings and our mind to gain sharp focus. I claim no expertise on GTD that has made home to many blog posts. Nonetheless, thoughts of “I may need it in the future,” or “Keep this magazine for the cool article that I may read in the future”, were largely responsible for the clutter that I used to surround with. After a while, I knew that if I have not taken time in past few weeks to glance over these magazines or that newspaper article, they have 20 percent or less chances to get my attention ever and even if that happens, that information may have less than 5 percent intrinsic value to make my life better. There goes piles of papers and magazines in the dumpster. I now have saved time that is infinitely more precious than going through daunting task of keeping clutter that needs my attention every time I gather courage to get organized.

For tribal man space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.
- Marshall Mcluhan (1911-1980) Canadian communications theorist and educator.

Other Blogs - Jonathan Mead has an excellent article on Focus - Important vs. Urgent: 5 Ways to Focus On What Really Matters


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To Your Success,

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Written by: Shilpan on 2008-04-19 at 11:32 pm
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