People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas there are.
—Steve Jobs, interviewed in Fortune, March 7, 2008
Focusing is about saying no long enough to get into flow, or at least some kind of mental state where your short-term memory doesn’t constantly evaporate. If you have to say no all the time, you’ll wind up twenty hours later having written six lines and with a head full of jelly.
Without context I’m tempted to say focusing is about a whole bunch of things and that telling people to say no is just another way of saying, ‘Use your willpower.’ Which is another way of saying ‘Focus by focusing!’ Which… seems rather recursive at least.
One of the things that focusing is about is giving up pursuing good things. Which means that if I want to focus, I need to decide which good things I’m going to say “no” to. This may seem obvious, but after seeing many not-otherwise-stupid management structures create lists of “priorities” that encompass everything good (and consequently aren’t priorities at all), I’m inclined to say that it isn’t as obvious as it may seem.
Or optimisation is going on at a different point in the company.
Or it is as obvious as it seems and sanity isn’t a property of management structures.
Come to think of it it’s not necessarily even a property of any individual who participated in the creation of that structure. An idiot who’s read The Effective Executive and How to Win Friends and Influence people should be a darned effective manager—but they’re not necessarily very intelligent. Similarly you can gradually converge on sane solutions without thinking anything through very far by applying fairly basic procedures, or even just being subject to selection pressures.
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You need to decide which good things you’re going to assign the most resources to, or in what order you’re going to do them, or have a list of very general priorities that you’re going to pass off to some other system in the company that will give you a similar sort of output. But however you do it, focusing isn’t as simple as saying no—or even as saying no to the right things. You’ll exclude some things by default but knowing when to say ‘let’s see’ and how strongly to say yes is also very useful.
But however you do it, focusing isn’t as simple as saying no—or even as saying no to the right things. You’ll exclude some things by default but knowing when to say ‘let’s see’ and how strongly to say yes is also very useful.
This reminds me of Steven Covey’s idea of a coordinate graph with four quadrants where you graph importance on on axis and urgency on the other. This gives you for types of “activities” to invest your time into.
Urgent and Unimportant (a phone ringing is a good example): this is where many people loose a tremendous amount of time
Urgent and Important (A broken bone or crime in progress) hese immediately demand our “focus”
Not Urgent and Not Important: pure time wasters- not a good place to invest much energy
Not Urgent BUT Important. This is the area Steven made a point of saying that most people fall short. Because these things are not urgent, we tend to put them off and not invest enough enough energy into them, but since they are important this means we pay a hefty price in the long run. Into this category he puts things like our health, important relationships, personal development and self improvement to name a few.
When we choose what to focus our energy on, we would do well to direct as much of it as possible to these types of activites
Let us say you have a paper to write but you also want to go to a party. While trying to write the paper, you could keep wondering whether you should stop writing the paper and just go to the party, but keep writing anyway, i.e. try to use willpower. Or you could decide, once and for all that you are not going to go to the party, which is saying no. I think the second approach will be more effective in getting the paper done. So, I think there is actually a difference.
Now, of course the insight isn’t profound and both folk and professional psychology has known it for some time (I can’t find a good link off-hand). But, when a successful person high-status person who has achieved a lot saying it lends it whole lot more of credibility.
-- Steve Jobs
Longer version from here
—Steve Jobs, interviewed in Fortune, March 7, 2008
Focusing is about saying no long enough to get into flow, or at least some kind of mental state where your short-term memory doesn’t constantly evaporate. If you have to say no all the time, you’ll wind up twenty hours later having written six lines and with a head full of jelly.
Without context I’m tempted to say focusing is about a whole bunch of things and that telling people to say no is just another way of saying, ‘Use your willpower.’ Which is another way of saying ‘Focus by focusing!’ Which… seems rather recursive at least.
One of the things that focusing is about is giving up pursuing good things.
Which means that if I want to focus, I need to decide which good things I’m going to say “no” to.
This may seem obvious, but after seeing many not-otherwise-stupid management structures create lists of “priorities” that encompass everything good (and consequently aren’t priorities at all), I’m inclined to say that it isn’t as obvious as it may seem.
Interesting take.
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Or optimisation is going on at a different point in the company.
Or it is as obvious as it seems and sanity isn’t a property of management structures.
Come to think of it it’s not necessarily even a property of any individual who participated in the creation of that structure. An idiot who’s read The Effective Executive and How to Win Friends and Influence people should be a darned effective manager—but they’re not necessarily very intelligent. Similarly you can gradually converge on sane solutions without thinking anything through very far by applying fairly basic procedures, or even just being subject to selection pressures.
====
You need to decide which good things you’re going to assign the most resources to, or in what order you’re going to do them, or have a list of very general priorities that you’re going to pass off to some other system in the company that will give you a similar sort of output. But however you do it, focusing isn’t as simple as saying no—or even as saying no to the right things. You’ll exclude some things by default but knowing when to say ‘let’s see’ and how strongly to say yes is also very useful.
Yes, agreed.
This reminds me of Steven Covey’s idea of a coordinate graph with four quadrants where you graph importance on on axis and urgency on the other. This gives you for types of “activities” to invest your time into.
Urgent and Unimportant (a phone ringing is a good example): this is where many people loose a tremendous amount of time
Urgent and Important (A broken bone or crime in progress) hese immediately demand our “focus”
Not Urgent and Not Important: pure time wasters- not a good place to invest much energy
Not Urgent BUT Important. This is the area Steven made a point of saying that most people fall short. Because these things are not urgent, we tend to put them off and not invest enough enough energy into them, but since they are important this means we pay a hefty price in the long run. Into this category he puts things like our health, important relationships, personal development and self improvement to name a few.
When we choose what to focus our energy on, we would do well to direct as much of it as possible to these types of activites
Let us say you have a paper to write but you also want to go to a party. While trying to write the paper, you could keep wondering whether you should stop writing the paper and just go to the party, but keep writing anyway, i.e. try to use willpower. Or you could decide, once and for all that you are not going to go to the party, which is saying no. I think the second approach will be more effective in getting the paper done. So, I think there is actually a difference.
Now, of course the insight isn’t profound and both folk and professional psychology has known it for some time (I can’t find a good link off-hand). But, when a successful person high-status person who has achieved a lot saying it lends it whole lot more of credibility.
I feel like it’s more about saying “yes” with enthusiasm.