PR ES I DEN T’S COLUM N
WHAT’S YOUR FOCUS?
DOMENIC LAURIA Vizmeg Landscape, Inc.
When it comes to improving something – be it our company, or ourselves – leadership, communication, strategy, innovation, and productivity are all topics that we tend to gravitate towards. Yet, when it comes to discussing the importance of maintaining focus in one’s life, we rarely talk about it. Why is ‘focus’ never thought about in the same category as some of these other topics? I’d make the argument that it’s because ‘focus’ is one of, if not the, hardest things to work on because we all love our distractions! The Huntington Post recently defined focus as: “the ability to pay attention to things that help, while avoiding the distractions that hurt, our work efforts.” Unfortunately, most of us tend to pay more attention to the things that hurt our work efforts. Examples of these include; social media, cell phones, emails, and coworkers – just to name a few.
Without focus, every time our minds wander away from our work, we are wasting time. As I spoke about in the February article, time is the most precious resource in the world. It is the one thing that is not re-creatable; that we can’t buy more of. So, it goes without saying, that without placing an emphasis on our abilities to focus that we are wasting our most precious resource.
As you may have noticed, in my first two articles I have written a good amount about two of my favorite influencers, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Prior to becoming great friends, these two titans knew of each other, yet thought they had very little in common. This was until Gates’ father invited Warren to a summer get together and the two had the opportunity to talk.
Many of us try not to waste time by multi-tasking and trying to do multiple things at once. Scientific research has shown that there is actually no such thing as multi-tasking (although my mother and wife will fight me on this). Instead of multitasking, our brains are just switching back and forth between two separate tasks. In fact, studies have shown that “multitasking” can result in a productivity loss of up to 40 percent. Productivity does not come from an app, or using a cell phone and tablet at the same time. Instead, true productivity comes from focusing on one individual task, giving it the attention it deserves, completing it, and then moving onto the next one.
During the meeting, Buffet openly admitted he knew absolutely nothing about technology (Fun Fact: He still uses a flip phone to this day). He says this to Gates, who at the time is the world leader in technological services. Yet they sit down, start talking, and realize they have a lot more in common than either of them thought. And, what was one of those core common denominators? They both attribute their successes to their abilities to maintain focus.
Distractions are the single greatest roadblock in regards to focus, yet we absolutely love them. As a society, we are constantly... continued on page 6 The Growing Concern | March 2020 | 3
