The importance of focus Richard St. John
you
eight to be great the eight trade
successful people have in common number
three focus when I asked James Cameron
how he managed to produce the two
highest-grossing films of all time
Titanic and Avatar he said focus had a
lot to do with it he said you’ve got to
be super focused like a laser to get
anything worthwhile done he said when I
did Avatar I was focused for four years
now I’m not saying you never think wide
at the beginning of anything whether
it’s your career or problem you’re
trying to solve you got to think wide
you got to take lots of stuff in and I
say when you’re young don’t focus too
soon just know in the back of your mind
that success requires a single-minded
focus as Larry Page co-founder Google
said to me you should focus on one
important goal and you need to be pretty
single-minded about it it was a
single-minded focus that enabled
astrophysicists to build a Space
Telescope the size of the of a suitcase
that only cost 10 million bucks compared
to the two billion it cost to build the
Hubble and when I asked mission
scientist Jamie Mathews about it he said
focus is the key word for our success we
pulled this off on a tight budget and
short timeline because we just did one
thing exceptionally well we didn’t try
and make the Swiss Army knife of
telescopes that did a lot of things
successful companies focus when Tom
Monaghan the founder of Domino’s Pizza
was asked the the secret of his success
he said a fanatical focus on doing one
thing well Bill Gates would agree he
says if you want to be a great software
company you have to be only a software
company
you can’t dabble in other things but
many companies and people do dabble and
I was one of them after ten years in the
work force I was dabbling in many
different areas and on the personal
front I was all over the map so I was
okay at a lot of things but I wasn’t
great at any one thing and when I looked
at successful people it was just the
opposite they’re not great at everything
they’re only great at one thing Quincy
Jones told me you can’t even drive a car
because he’s focused his whole life on
making great music
and that’s what made him great so I
figured I had to focus and become an
expert at something so I cut out all the
dabbling and focused only on photography
I became a successful advertising
photographer and I even won top awards
in both photography and video so I
discovered focus really does pay off in
addition to long-term focus
there’s also short-term concentration
just being able to put our heads down
and get something done right now
Jennifer Mather a famous animal behavior
says I have a ferocious ability to
concentrate I can say I’m going to do
this and close the rest of the world on
concentration helped Yong Kim succeed he
was working at minimum wage in a
7-eleven store then he developed URI
systems sold it to loosen personally
made 500 million cash and became
president of Lucent Technologies and he
said concentration had a lot to do it he
said I can work day and night and
maintain the concentration without
getting burned out so concentration is a
valuable skill to develop and it’s not
easy to develop and there’s so many
distractions out there and scientists
are developing new ones all the time
although it’s not easy because they keep
getting distracted now with emails
mobile phones and all the stuff on the
web it’s a wonder we can we can
concentrate for five seconds before
something warbles beats vibrators place
somebody’s favorite team but the trick
is to eliminate the distractions when we
need to concentrate
best-selling author Stephen King says if
you want to be a writer
there should be no phone in your writing
room no TV no video games draw the
curtains eliminate every possible
distraction and by doing that he became
one of the world’s most popular writers
and remember Warren Buffett became one
of the world’s richest men by living in
a constant state of no distractions
it’s called Nebraska he says when I
worked back in New York there were more
stimuli hearing me all the time it’s
much easier to think here and I wonder
if that isn’t one of the big reasons why
so many successful people I interview
actually grew up in small towns not big
cities fewer distractions more ability
to focus and concentrate but now all
that’s going to change because with the
Internet
we can be in the middle of nowhere and
still be distracted and concentration
doesn’t always mean being in a quiet
room or alone many people actually use
noise to eliminate distractions Stephen
King does remember he’s the guy who said
eliminate every possible distraction but
he also says I work to loud music for me
the music is just another way of
shutting the door John Seely Brown also
uses noise to eliminate distractions
he’s chief scientist at Xerox and he
said to me I did my doctoral thesis in a
bar because I loved the noise I could
concentrate even with the noise all
around me jeez I thought all those
people in bars were partying now it
turns out they could be PhDs and
learning how to concentrate is all about
practice practice practice
Lindsey sharp heads up for museums in
London and he said to me it’s very hard
to concentrate so you have to practice a
lot he said I learned how to study in
the middle of an airport so now if I’m
concentrating and there’s a siren
outside I don’t even hear it the
bottom-line focus helps us succeed
whether it’s long-term focus or
short-term concentration
you