
The power of Focus | Change your thoughts - edragonu
http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/2009/07/28/the-power-of-focus/
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bkovitz
I feel great encouragement upon seeing that his blog brings in $1500 a month.
The writing is mediocre. "Now grab your balls and jump." But apparently it
provides enough value for enough of an audience to get the University of
Phoenix, Dianetics, and the author of an ebook on how to pick up women in
parks, bookstores, and clubs to pay him some decent money.

Rereading that, it looks sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way. Something
that holds a lot of us back from getting into business, including me, is that
we don't tolerate mediocrity _anywhere_ in our lives. We don't eat at the
Olive Garden, we don't listen to Britney Spears, we don't settle for junky
cameras or poorly exposed pictures, and most of us won't even use Windows. For
us, it's either minimalist or excellent—either ramen noodles or home-cooked
Indian food (and even when we make ramen noodles, they come out surprisingly
good). But the majority of actual b2c transactions consist of exchanging money
for mediocrity, between people who don't know and don't care.

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edw519
Every time I read about scheduling, prioritization, and focusing on your top
tasks, I think of the movie "The Exorcist" when father Karras briefs father
Merrin:

KARRAS - I think it would be helpful if I gave you some background on the
different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, there seems to be three.
She's convinced-

MERRIN - There's only one.

If you're a programmer, forget about scheduling, prioritizing, and focusing on
multiple things. Work exclusively on the #1 thing. Nothing else has made me
more productive. See how simple.

pg even talks about it in his essay "Good and Bad Procrastination"

<http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

"What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

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bkovitz
Declaring a date and numerical measure for a goal so much beyond your control
strikes me a little weird. Sure, it leads to productive and joyful action, so
that's good. But large-scale market acceptance depends on finding an
opportunity for fast growth and capitalizing on it, not (merely) on hard work
or even focused work. If you are barking up the wrong tree, you will get
nothing no matter how loud and long you bark.

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pmichaud
I'll give him a chance. He might be shooting too far, too soon with the one
post a day stuff, but I'll subscribe and give him the chance.

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jlees
Well, it's presumably something he's figured out he can do. Not having time to
dig into his previous posting patterns, it could be a bit of a jump, but
ultimately if he wants the 10,000 subscribers he'll need to be offering up
more than one post a day - so it's a good start.

I love to see people who boldly declare their goals, and then visibly start
working on them; much better than looking back and saying "I did it" when
nobody knew you were trying to do it in the first place! But then I'm a
productivity voyeur, so..

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thras
The _real_ power of Focus: [http://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-
Thought/dp/08125363...](http://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-
Thought/dp/0812536355)

