Where should you focus yourthinking?

Develop Your Dream
If you want to achieve great things, you need to have a great dream. If you’re not sure of your dream, use
your focused thinking time to help you discover it. If your thinking has returned to a particular area time after
time, you may be able to discover your dream there. Give it more focused time and see what happens. Once
you find your dream, move forward without second-guessing. Take the advice of Satchel Paige: “Don’t look
back—something might be gaining on you.”
The younger you are, the more likely you will give your attention to many things. That’s good because if
you’re young you’re still getting to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. If you focus your thinking on
only one thing and your aspirations change, then you’ve wasted your best mental energy. As you get older and
more experienced, the need to focus becomes more critical. The farther and higher you go, the more focused
you can be—and need to be.
HOW CAN YOU STAY FOCUSED?
Once you have a handle on what you should think about, you must decide how to better focus on it. Here are
five suggestions to help you with the process:
1. Remove Distractions
Removing distractions is no small matter in our current culture, but it’s critical. How do you do it? First, by
maintaining the discipline of practicing your priorities. Don’t do easy things first or hard things first or urgent
things first. Do first things first—the activities that give you the highest return. In that way, you keep the
distractions to a minimum.
Second, insulate yourself from distractions. I’ve found that I need blocks of time to think without
interruptions. I’ve mastered the art of making myself unavailable when necessary and going off to my “thinking
place” so that I can work without interruptions. Because of my responsibilities as founder of three companies,
however, I am always aware of the tension between my need to remain accessible to others as a leader and
my need to withdraw from them to think. The best way to resolve the tension is to understand the value of both
activities. Walking slowly through the crowd allows me to connect with people and know their needs.
Withdrawing from the crowd allows me to think of ways to add value to them.
My advice to you is to place value on and give attention to both. If you naturally withdraw, then make sure to
get out among people more often. If you’re always on the go and rarely withdraw for thinking time, then remove
yourself periodically so that you can unleash the potential of focused thinking. And wherever you are… be there!