It’s not Hocus Pocus, It’s about Focus

Posted by Faizel Mohidin on Jul 26, 2009 in Mind Maps at Work, Mind Maps in Education, Personal Mind Maps | 0 comments

This is the chapter title of a book I recently purchased. The book is ‘The Power of Focus’, by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt.

You may be wondering why I would choose to write about this in an article on learning and Mind Mapping, but I hope that it will soon be evident. I also hope that the evidence will convince you that you need a bit more focus in your life, if you truly want to achieve your life’s dreams.

The chapter opens with a wonderful quote of Charles Dickens:

I could never have done without the habits of punctuality, order and diligence…the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

Charles Dickens is known to be a great author. He produced numerous and varied works, yet he owes his success to being able to concentrate on one subject at a time.

If you think of many great people, they are often known for one thing only. e.g. Bill Gates (Microsoft), Henry Ford (Motor Cars), Jim Carrey (Comedy).

While they have done many other things, it is their focus on their main area of expertise that brought them their fame.

Bill Gates focused on the desktop computer. He wanted to ‘own the desktop’ and therefore focused on desktop operating systems initially. IBM and other competitors focused on mainframe operating systems, unix operating systems, servers, hardware and many other things. It was not long before Microsoft was on nearly every desktop computer in the world!

Henry Ford was criticised for his famous saying about the Model-T Ford, ‘You can have it in any colour, as long as it is black!’ While analysts say that he should have changed to other models and other colours early, they can’t deny that he took the production line to levels unheard of before.

Jim Carrey did not focus on drama, thrillers, etc. He focused strictly on comedy initially. He realised that his rubber like face and body could be used to great effect and practiced for hours in front of the mirror. After his first hit, Ace Vantura, Pet Detective, he still focused on comedy. It was only recently that he attempted dramatical roles.

There are numerous cases of successful people focusing on what they are brilliant at, and leaving others to do the rest.

If you are a star athlete, you have to perform on the field. If your performance suffers because you got involved with the media, public relations, image and other distractions, you will soon lose what you worked so hard for.

How does this affect you?

We are all blessed with a few ‘God given’ talents. Your role is to spend a big part of your life discovering what they are and then utilising and applying them to the best of your ability.

When you focus most of your time and energy doing the things that you are brilliant at, you will eventually reap the rewards.

‘The Power of Focus’ gives us another wonderful example.

The Rolling Stones

Imagine a Rolling Stones concert. Whether you like Mick Jagger and his crew, or not, you can’t deny the fact that they have been drawing crowds for nearly forty years.

Let’s peek behind the scenes…

The stage is set. More than two hundred people were needed to build the set, which is a few stories tall and half the length of a football field. This same set is transported from city to city during a tour. Just imagine the logistics involved!

Two private planes carry the band, crew and other key members from city to city.

A limousine pulls up back of the stage. The images are projected on huge screens inside the stadium. The 70 000 strong crowd goes wild!

The Stones walk on the stage, give another energetic and mind blowing performance, sending their fans home happy and satisfied.

They can only achieve this by focusing on their area of expertise, performing.

If they focused on the details of hauling equipment, complex itinerary, setting up the stage or any of the hundreds of other tasks involved in delivering a smooth performance, do you think they will still be so successful?

Their 1994 world tour made more that $80 million profit!

Focus on your natural talents

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Michael Jordan, the basketball superstar, made hundreds of jump shots every day, no matter what. George Best, one of the world’s footballing geniuses, would practice lining up balls at various distances from the goal posts and practice scoring from those positions. He would often stay hours after other had finished training. As a result, he ended up being Manchester United’s top scorer for six consecutive seasons.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma does not only apply to entrepreneurs. It can be applied to any venture, but the example of the entrepreneur is a good one to illustrate the point.

Image starting a new business idea. You are so excited, you can hardly sleep. The idea totally consumes you. You are convinced that this idea will lead to your financial freedom and independence.

You pluck up the courage to start and off you go. Within no time, your business is up and running, you are making sales and may even have employed a few people.

Now picture yourself two years later. Your business is fully functional. You have rental, electricity and wages to pay. You have to fill in your Vat forms, balance the books and tend to labour issues. You have to chase suppliers, debtors and delivery dates. Creditors are hounding you for payment.

Suddenly, the picture does not look as much fun. In fact, the business is probably suffering because you are not delivering the customer service that is needed to be successful. You are probably not working on the initial idea that inspired you in the first place and you are probably doing things that don’t inspire you, or that you are not particularly good at.

I hope you get the point.

If you had gotten other people to do a lot of the work that you don’t like, or are not good at, and focused on your talents and expertise, your business would be innovative, successful and fun!

Well, that’s it. Whether you want to be successful as Bill Gates, or simply enjoy what you are doing, start focusing on what you are good at and what you love. Become the best you can at it and watch how easy it will be to hand over the ‘other stuff’ to other people.

Learn how to learn

As I’ve quoted before, ‘Your ability to learn faster than your competition is your only sustainable competitive advantage – Arie De Geus’.

By focusing on your talents, as stated above, and learning how to learn will ensure that you will be the best you can be.

Enrol now for our Learning Management Programme to get one on one support and Awaken the Genius in YOU!

What about me?

You may be wondering what credentials I have. Am I successful? What right do I have to write about these things?

Let’s hope this brief summary convinces you.

I head up the Business Intelligence of a large fashion retail company in South Africa. While I worked in many different areas in IT, I realised that I loved the concept of turning data into information and get a competitive advantage through this information. I loved everything about this and, even though I started my career as a programmer, I moved into database administration to get closer to the data. This narrowed down my focus, enabled me to specialise and enabled me to get a job in The Netherlands, focusing only on database administration and design.

My love for data took me into the Data Warehouse world and Business Intelligence. I initially only administered these systems, but later came to design them and have a few big ‘designs’ under my belt.

Today, I am a senior manager that is still very close to the technology and the structures, but with a wealth of business knowledge and understanding.

I also did a Post Graduate Business Management Degree and spent some time out of IT, in the business unit of one of the largest cellular operators in South Africa, before returning to IT and my passion.

Mind Maps have been a part of this proces and it has given me the ability to learn faster than most of my competitors in this field.

You are receiving this simply because of my abilities to focus on my passions and what I believe I am good at.

So don’t waste any more time. Find your passion, focus on it and learn as much as you can about it!