Avoiding Everythingitis — Focus helps you achieve everything you need to. Eventually.

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Matt Mullenweg founded WordPress. Today, the company’s software drives around 40% of the world’s websites.

But it nearly failed.

WordPress Version 2.0 was launched to the masses on December 31 2005.

Version 3.0 came in January 22 2007.

Mullenweg calls the period inbetween “the lost year”. If only they’d tried and tested each new feature as they came up with it, so much could have been learned from feedback. Instead, his team tried to put everything into it before saying it was done.

When WordPress 3.0 was launched, it had everything and the kitchen sink. And it was slammed by users who found all the faults in it quickly.

When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, there were mediocre reviews and user complaints.

The New York Times called it “revolutionary and flawed”:

“It doesn’t do the things the most basic of phones can do… There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialling.”

Can you imagine being Steve Jobs reading this, and trying to encourage your team to keep going?

Can you imagine being Steve Jobs reading this while walking around the Cupertino Head Quarters with the next iteration of the iPhone in your pocket, capable of all those things that the reviewers and journalists said were missing?

Can you imagine being unable to defend yourself, unable to say a word until the iPhone 3G was released a whole year later?

Focus allows you to keep going and to do the right thing, even when everyone else is pulling you off into distractions. And you’ll get everything done, eventually. But you can only do one thing at a time, really well.

When you’re spreading your focus thin, across too many things, you end up with a bad case of everythingitis.

Everythingitis is where you throw everything into the pot of what needs done, including the kitchen sink. So many ‘strategic plans’ are really just laundry lists of long, important and expensive work that needs done.

Everythingitis is a disease that creates a tougher working environment for everyone, and I reckon it takes longer to get everything done, and it’s not done so well.

Schools are already rare in being genuinely mission-based organisations. People choose to work in a school even if it’s tough, because the mission is at their heart, not just the organisation’s.

Do let’s not make it tougher for them. Forget throwing in the kitchen sink. Forget trying to do everything well.

Focussing makes it more manageable for people to get behind something and give it their all, and actually get a sense of completion, before moving onto the next target. You’ll end up with the kitchen sink eventually. But most people need to start with just one thing. It’s enough.

So how do you overcome everythingitis? It’s important to know what you expect to be ‘business as usual’, and what might be considered a stretch goal for people. The stretch goal — one of them — is your focus. By definition, focus can’t be two things at once. Master that goal, then move on to the next one.

One key part therefore of avoiding everythingitis is to test out ideas early on and then build on your successes. Get your R&D teams working hard. And recognise that if that new work doesn’t work out, it’s all just feedback for the next iteration.

And when your day-to-day work is being done consistently well, to the point no-one even thinks about it any more, make sure you step everyone back over some good coffee and pastries to recognise just how far you’ve come.

Then refocus on the bold ambition to come.