Setting Focus

There is a difference between choosing your focus and making decisions. Choosing focus defines the playing field while making decisions is about how you play.

So, when you make a decision, you want to know you're in the right game — otherwise your decision might be in vain. (yes, that rhymes)

Maybe you have heard of the Pareto principle. Originally, the Pareto Principle referred to the observation — made by a guy called Pareto — that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to only 20% of the population

For example:

20% of the input creates 80% of the result
20% of the workers produce 80% of the result
20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue
20% of the bugs cause 80% of the crashes
20% of the features cause 80% of the usage
And on and on…

Now, if you create a list of topics that are important for your project, go ahead and choose the 20% most impactful topics. But don't stop there! Do it one more time and reduce the 20% even further to yet another 20%.

Depending on your list you probably now are down to one to four topics. This is your focus area, your playing field.

Doing this for yourself has a massive impact on your productivity. But as soon as more people are involved, things become a little bit more tricky. For this i can offer you the tool we created to save our lives — literally by stopping to waste 50% of our waking time in meetings.

We call it untwist and it helps us to untangle all the open ends and discussions meetings usually create and turn them into a straight thread to success.
I always love hearing from people about their experience regarding meetings, productivity and happiness — feel free to email me at thomas@untwist.io !