As a famous Italian proverb goes, “Often he who does too much; does too little.” The primary reason for most of the successes that people have seen in their personal or professional lives has been that one magical five letter word – FOCUS.
The Chinese believe that if you chase two rabbits, both will escape – a simple thought which speaks a lot about focusing on what you want as opposed to focusing on what you really do not want. “I don’t want to be late”, “I don’t want more work coming my way” “I don’t want to meet my angry boss” “I don’t want to be stuck in traffic.” Thinking about what we don’t want takes away most of our time that we hardly get time to think about what we actually want. With clarity in focus, we get very close to achieving it already. Looking at people who fail, it is pretty evident that they have either focused too much on what they did not want or on too many things. Focusing on many things, however; is a more serious issue. Malcolm Gladwell says that if you want to shine, whether in sports or business or art or science, all that you have to do is put in 10,000 hours only in that field. The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field. When people say that one has to be lucky to be a star, they seldom realize that the success mantra is simply the “ability to focus.” With focus, you not only get dedicated and gain expertise; you also see your goal with better clarity.
Life is just like a camera, where unless the focus ring is adjusted towards the subject, the picture is blurred. Once you do focus on the subject, there is a depth of field created by blurring everything around it.
