The Main Thing Is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

It’s all about the main thing

Photo credit: Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

By Bruce McTague

… my grandfather taught me … “… the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
—
Stephen Covey’s grandson

Well. This is about focus and decisions (because if you focus on the wrong decision you are in trouble). Anyway. When I saw “… the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” this morning, I was reminded how much most of us, young & old, in business suck at this. Yet, it sounds so frickin’ simple … how could we all suck so much at this?

A couple thoughts on that:

– We get distracted.

– The main thing we select is not really the main thing.

Let’s be clear. The ‘main thing’ is the relationship between “what I elect to, or should, focus on” and actual ‘focus’, i.e., the decision and the commitment to the decision. If you get either side of this relationship wrong you may as well accept ‘non-success.’

Let me explain the two things.

Distraction.

While what I am now going to say sounds contrary to popular belief — I am not sure life and business is any more distracting now than…