Trying To Get Focused

From time to time, my mentors remind me of something that I try and keep at the forefront of my thought process: Good is the opposite of great. From my own personal experience, this seems to be the greatest deterrent from higher levels of success. We often get excited about getting to a certain point and it can blind us from really stretching ourselves to a more enjoyable level of satisfaction. Many times, we put a couple minor things on hold and reach that "good" point, and then let a couple of the minor things back in to the forefront. Then, not only do we sabotage our efforts of getting to great, but we also endanger our comfort-filled "good" position.

What am I talking about? Well, I'll use personal anecdote to explain. I love sports. Going to sporting events, watching sporting events, reading about and talking about sports. I played just about any sport I could growing up and multiple sports in high school. As a kid, the most consistent conversation I had with my Dad was talking sports and sports statistics. That hasn't changed a lot, actually. Regardless, sports was an enormous part of my life.

The business that I'm involved in, however, takes a great deal of focus when it comes to where and how I'm spending my time. There is often a direct correlation between personal development, action and end result. The only issue is that often times what determined the end result and it's time frame can only be quantified when the end result is met. I know, I know, you want it in English. My business involves dealing with many different personalities if one plans to succeed at high levels and very few people are naturals in this arena. Even those who are benefit from continued development, so commiting time to developing in this area is pretty vital to succeeding. The thing is, you don't usually know if you've worked on yourself enough until you're either attracting people with your behavior or repelling them until after it's happened. It's not like you read a chapter of a book like Bringing Out The Best In People and at that moment everything clicks into place.

What do these different ramblings have to do with how I started this post? When I'm at home at night, choices abound. I can do anything from trying to combine a little ESPN with reading just before bed, to falling asleep with the TV on before I even get to the reading part. When I leave my day job, I have the opportunity to either go out and shake some hands, make some new friends and delve into the personal networking part of my business, or I can stop at the house and spend an hour or so with my little girl before heading back out. Now, most people will say, "why can't you just do a little of both?," and to be honest, that's what I fight all the time.

Here is why I can't do both: watching some sports and reading a little or spending a little of my prime networking time at home with my daughter before heading back out will most likely result in me being good at what I'm trying to accomplish, but not great. The fear is looking back in two years, not having the results I could have had, and still be working in the active-income arena with a daughter that is two years older. To be more to the point, this is what I look back on now and get angry at myself about. I've tried to do both and so far I've become pretty good at knowing my business, my personal development and the growing my business. What stinks is that I look back and see that if I would have just focused solely on the business, I could be in position right now to be living in the strictly passive income world.

The solution seems obvious, right? Just keep the dumb TV off and give up a little time with the kid to spend all kinds of time with her in the near future. So why is it still so hard to do? For one, I believe that putting watching sports (or more honestly - Sportscenter) on the back-burner is essentially breaking a habit spanning multiple decades. I'm only 30, but sports has been a mainstay as long as I can remember. Don't get me wrong, I don't sit at home watching games during prime time. I've overcome that. The issue is postponing even the 45 minutes of Sportscenter that I can oftentimes fall asleep watching, thus eliminating my attempts to read. Honestly, in total, outside of watching a movie rental on a Saturday night with Mrs. Objects In The Mirror, I may watch a little less than 10 hours of television a week. For most, this is pretty good. For me, it's not great.

When it comes to the stop at home, it was a mini-habit that started from me stopping at home to change cars with Mrs. Objects. I couldn't just switch cars and be back on the road. I had to at least go inside and see the little one. Well, once I was in the house, Mrs. Objects had a touch of relief and tried to knock out a couple of quick things while I played with the little one. Before you know it, it's an hour later and I've lost vital time.

So here's what we're going to do: despite the fact that my Bears are odds on favorites to go to the Super Bowl this year and the Bulls are actually better than their record (I shouldn't even know their record if I want to be great,) I am putting myself on a timeout. How? I'm going into the old bag of tricks to get the job done. I can't get rid of the TV because the little one loves Baby Einstein, but I can leave notes for myself to not watch it. Notes that say things like: "Sportscenter doesn't get you out of your job." I'm also putting myself back on a book per week habit. The last time I set a focus like this I was very good at maintaining it.

Can I turn it around that easily? I think I can. My freedom is that important to me. I'm planning on 2007 being the last year I work for someone else, and if I'm serious, I have to be serious. Here we go ...