Asher's Blog

Focus is one of the greatest habits a founder or leader can develop because nearly every meaningful ambition competes with more opportunities than one person or company can pursue.

There will always be another partnership to consider, another market to enter, another product to build, another event to attend and another idea that appears urgent because somebody else is already doing it. Many of these opportunities will not be bad. Some will be genuinely good; that is what makes focus difficult.

Distraction does not always arrive looking like foolishness; it often arrives looking like an opportunity.

Mike Murdock has taught that focus creates blindness. I understand the idea this way: when you choose to focus on something, you also choose what you will temporarily stop seeing. You direct your attention towards one objective and accept that other possibilities must remain outside your field of vision.

That blindness can be dangerous when it prevents a leader from noticing reality, but disciplined exclusion is essential when it protects the organisation from chasing everything. The challenge is to become blind to distraction without becoming blind to evidence.

Focus Is the Discipline of Exclusion

People often think focus means concentrating very hard on a task. That is part of it, but it is not the whole meaning.

Focus is deciding what deserves your attention before competing demands make that decision for you. It is the discipline of giving one objective enough time, capital and thought to produce a meaningful result. It requires refusing activities that may be individually attractive but collectively destructive.

Steve Jobs explained Apple’s approach to innovation by saying that it came from “saying no to 1,000 things.” The power of that statement is that many of those rejected ideas were probably good. Focus is not demonstrated by saying no only to obviously bad opportunities. It is demonstrated when you can decline a good opportunity because it does not serve the objective you have chosen.

This is why I prefer phrases such as sustained focus, disciplined focus or unwavering focus to relentless focus. The word relentless can imply pressure without recovery, or persistence without reflection. Good focus is intense, but it is also thoughtful. It makes room for rest, feedback and correction while remaining committed to the destination.

I Have Always Found Compartmentalisation Natural

From a young age, I found it relatively easy to focus. When I was in college, people told me that I could compartmentalise very well. A friend has described me as weird, and perhaps I am, although I will not give all the evidence for that conclusion here.

What I recognise is that I can often separate an emotional event from the work that still needs to be done. Situations that might derail another person do not always derail me in the same way. I can place one matter in its proper space, turn my attention towards the decision in front of me and continue functioning.

That ability has been useful in business because leadership does not pause every time life becomes emotionally complicated. Employees still need direction; customers still need to be served. Payroll still has to be completed. A difficult conversation in one part of the organisation cannot be allowed to contaminate every other decision.

However, compartmentalisation should not become emotional denial. Emotions contain information. Fear may be pointing towards risk. Anger may reveal that a value has been violated. Grief may require time rather than suppression. If we repeatedly lock difficult emotions away without processing them, they can return through exhaustion, impatience, poor judgement or damaged relationships.

Healthy compartmentalisation says, “This emotion is real, but it will not control this unrelated decision. I will give it an appropriate time and place.” Unhealthy suppression says, “This emotion does not exist, and I never need to address it.”

Focus is strongest when it helps us govern emotion, not when it asks us to become less human.

Focus Does Not Automatically Make You Rational

I have often felt that focus makes me more rational. It creates enough separation from noise and emotion to examine what is actually happening. That is valuable, but focus by itself does not guarantee rationality.

A person can be intensely focused on the wrong assumption. A founder can ignore contradictory customer evidence because they are committed to a product. A leader can concentrate so strongly on revenue that they stop noticing conduct that will eventually destroy the company. History contains many examples of disciplined people pursuing destructive objectives.

Rational focus must therefore contain a feedback mechanism. It must repeatedly ask:

• What is the objective?
• What evidence supports our present approach?
• What evidence contradicts it?
• What has changed since we chose this direction?
• What result would cause us to reconsider?

Where reliable scientific evidence exists, we should use it. We do not need to reinvent every wheel through intuition. Data, experiments and established knowledge can narrow the range of reasonable choices. Yet science does not eliminate judgement. Evidence may tell us what generally happens under defined conditions; leaders still have to determine whether those conditions apply to the particular decision before them.

Being rational does not mean removing values and emotions from every choice. It means making the assumptions, evidence, trade-offs and consequences visible enough to think honestly.

Your Attention Is More Fragile Than It Feels

Modern work makes sustained attention unusually difficult. Messages, meetings, email, dashboards and social media compete for the same mental space. We may feel productive because we are responding constantly, even though very little important work receives uninterrupted thought.

Researcher Gloria Mark has reported that, in studies of computer use, the average time people remained on one screen before switching was about 47 seconds. That number should not be misinterpreted as a universal measure of the human attention span; it describes the fragmentation observed in particular digital-work settings. Still, it shows how frequently our working attention can move.

The cost is not limited to the seconds required to open another application. Sophie Leroy’s research describes attention residue: when we switch from one unfinished task to another, part of our attention remains attached to the previous task, reducing performance on the next one.

This explains why a day filled with activity can produce surprisingly little progress. The problem may not be laziness; it may be fragmentation.

Founders are especially vulnerable because almost every subject can plausibly demand their attention. A customer escalation feels important. So does fundraising, hiring, product, compliance, finance and strategy. If the founder switches between all of them every few minutes, the company may have the founder’s constant activity without receiving the founder’s best thinking. Focus requires protecting depth, not merely filling time.

Begin With One Clear Objective

It is difficult to reject distractions when you have not defined what deserves priority.

For a business to focus, its overall objective must be clear enough to guide decisions. “We want to grow” is not sufficiently precise. Grow which customer group, through which product, towards which measurable outcome and within what period? What are we optimising for right now: revenue, customer adoption, profitability, retention, product reliability or the evidence required for a future fundraising round?

These goals can support one another over time, but they do not always demand the same immediate action. A company optimising for profitability may reject a customer segment that requires heavy servicing. A company trying to establish product-market fit may accept manual work temporarily in order to learn. A company prioritising reliability may delay new features even when salespeople are requesting them.

A useful objective should answer four questions:

1. What result are we pursuing?
2. Why does it matter now?
3. How will we know we have achieved it?
4. What are we willing to deprioritise until then?

The fourth question is the test. An objective without an explicit trade-off is usually only a preference.

Once the objective is clear, every major opportunity can be tested against it: does this decision move us towards the objective, materially improve our ability to reach it or protect us from a risk that could prevent it? If the answer is no, the opportunity should probably wait.

Say No to 99 Things, but Understand the One Yes

I often say that if you want to build a successful business, you may have to say no to 99 out of every 100 things.

That is not a literal operating ratio that every company must calculate. It is a way of expressing how selective a founder must become. Time and capital are finite, while ideas are not.

You will need to say no to partnerships that sound impressive but require too much operational distraction. You will reject marketing initiatives that generate attention without attracting the right customers. You may decline sales opportunities that pull the product into endless customisation. You may decide not to enter a territory simply because competitors are entering it.

The quality of your no depends on the clarity of your yes. If you do not know the customer you intend to serve, every customer request will appear equally important. If you do not know the capability you are building, every partnership will look strategic. If you do not know the financial model, every source of revenue will appear valuable even when it destroys margins.

Do not say no merely to appear disciplined. Understand why the one yes deserves concentration.

Do Not Copy the Industry Without Understanding the Logic

When several companies in your industry begin following a pattern, it creates pressure to join them. Perhaps everybody is entering a new market, launching a similar feature, hiring influencers, reducing prices or raising a particular type of capital.

Before following, ask why they are doing it. Their objective may be different from yours. They may possess a distribution advantage you do not have, or they may be responding to a problem you do not face. They may have more capital and be able to tolerate a longer payback period. They may also be wrong.

Visible activity should not be confused with sound strategy. Ask what the action means for your own business. What customer need does it address? What advantage will it create? What resources will it consume? What existing commitment will slow down? If the experiment fails, what will it cost? If it succeeds, does it take you towards the company you are trying to build?

You should understand your competitors, but you do not have to inherit their priorities.

Focus Shapes Every Important Business Decision

When an organisation has a clear objective, focus begins to improve decisions across the business.

It creates clarity about partnerships because you can distinguish between a relationship that advances the strategy and one that merely creates activity.

It shapes hiring because you know which capabilities are essential now rather than hiring generally impressive people without clearly defined work.

It also gives leaders the courage to move the wrong people out of critical roles. If the objective matters, sentiment cannot be allowed to keep somebody in a position where they are consistently unable or unwilling to deliver what the company requires. The process should remain fair, factual and humane, but focus makes the cost of misalignment visible.

Focus determines territory. It helps the company decide when to expand and when to deepen its position in an existing market. Expansion may look like growth while actually dividing management attention, weakening service and consuming capital that the core business still needs.

Focus improves capital allocation because resources follow a declared priority. If everything is strategic, budgets become political. Every department argues that its request matters, and money is distributed across too many initiatives to produce decisive results anywhere.

Focus is therefore not simply a personal productivity skill. It is an organising principle for the company.

Build a System That Protects Focus

Good intentions are not enough because the environment will continue presenting distractions. Focus needs a system.

For an individual leader, that system might include:

• one clearly stated priority for the current season;
• protected blocks for thinking and important work;
• defined periods for email, messages and approvals;
• a short list of decisions that genuinely require the founder;
• a place to store ideas without immediately acting on them;
• regular reviews of progress against the objective;
• explicit criteria for accepting meetings, partnerships and speaking invitations.

For a company, the system may include quarterly priorities, measurable outcomes, owners, budgets and a “not now” list. The not-now list is important because rejected ideas do not always need to be destroyed. Recording them reduces the fear that saying no means losing the idea forever.

The organisation should also limit work in progress. Starting ten initiatives can create the appearance of momentum, but completing two important ones usually creates more value. Every active project consumes attention through meetings, decisions, follow-ups and unresolved questions, even when nobody is actively working on it.

The number of priorities should reflect the organisation’s real capacity, not the size of its imagination.

Know When Focus Has Become Tunnel Vision

The same strength that helps a founder persist can also prevent necessary change.

Focus becomes tunnel vision when the leader stops listening to customers, dismisses evidence, punishes disagreement or protects an objective after its underlying assumptions have failed. It becomes dangerous when the company is committed to a method rather than a mission.

To protect against this, define review points. Decide in advance when progress will be examined and what evidence would justify continuing, changing the approach or stopping. Invite people who are close enough to understand the business but independent enough to challenge your thinking.

The distinction is simple:

• Distraction moves you away from the objective without sufficient reason.
• Adaptation changes the route because new evidence provides a better way to reach the objective.

Focus should resist the first and permit the second.

When You Lose Focus, Step Away Long Enough to Recover It

There have been periods when certain events affected me emotionally and I felt my focus slipping. At those times, I had to make a deliberate effort to recover it.

When you can no longer distinguish what is important from what is merely loud, continuing at the same speed may not help. Sometimes the most productive action is to step away for a short period.

I would recommend taking time—perhaps even three days—to meditate, pray, think and regain clarity. This is not a holiday from responsibility. It is a strategic pause designed to return the mind to the objective.

During that time, remove the normal flow of messages and meetings. Write down what is demanding your attention. Revisit the original mission. Examine the facts without forcing an immediate answer. Ask what has changed, what remains true, what you are afraid of and which commitments no longer serve the goal. Seek wise counsel where necessary, but preserve enough silence to hear your own thinking and, for those of us who believe, to seek the leading of the Holy Spirit.

You can return with a short statement:

This is the objective; these are the three things that matter now. These are the things we will stop or postpone. This is how we will measure progress. That kind of clarity can reset an entire organisation.

Focus Creates Clarity

Focus does not guarantee success. You can choose the wrong objective, misunderstand the evidence or execute poorly. But without focus, even strong people and good opportunities become scattered across too many directions.

Focus gives ambition a centre of gravity. It helps you select the right partnerships, recruit the capabilities you actually need, remove persistent misalignment, choose the territories worth entering and allocate capital towards the work most likely to matter. It allows ideas to mature long enough to be tested properly and protects the organisation from interpreting every industry movement as an instruction.

Most importantly, focus tells you what to do today. If the year is ending and the objective remains distant, do not simply increase activity. Return to the objective. Examine the gap. Identify the few actions most capable of closing it, and give those actions sustained attention. If a decade is passing without meaningful progress, the need is not another inspirational declaration; it is an honest review of the objective, the method and the consistency of execution.

Know what you are building. Know why it matters. Know what you are prepared to ignore for now.

Then keep looking at the objective—not so rigidly that you become blind to truth, but so steadily that distraction cannot decide your future.

References

• Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Gloria Mark, Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity
• Sophie Leroy, “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
• Steve Jobs, quoted in “The Steve Jobs MBA: In His Own Words”, Wired
• Mike Murdock, teachings on focus and broken focus