Focus
Kat Fergerson and
Focus
Anyone can say no to bad ideas, but only a focused person can say no to good ideas. Focus is about saying no.
When talking about one of the biggest lessons he learned from Steve Jobs, Jonny Ive said it was focus.
When talking about one of the biggest lessons he learned from Steve Jobs, Jonny Ive said it was focus.
This sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this, and it’s a struggle to practice, but is this... See more
Farnam Street • Focus to Win
I have a suspicion that most adults (75%+) could pick any skill—excluding sports—and work their way into the top 10% in the world simply by working exclusively on it every day for two years.
But almost nobody displays that degree of focus, so we will never know.
James Cleartwitter.comThe best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody’s part-time job.
Colin Bryar • Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
sari and
One thing I do look back on fondly was how incredibly focused we were. Resources and time were so tight that you could feel the weight of all the things you weren’t working on. You had real conviction that the thing you were doing was the most important thing.
To pick a somewhat trivial example, at fireside chats with Mark (the predecessor to the... See more
To pick a somewhat trivial example, at fireside chats with Mark (the predecessor to the... See more
Andrew Bosworth • Focus
How to identify your invisible asymptotes
One way to identify your invisible asymptotes is to simply ask your customers. As I noted at the start of this piece, at Amazon we honed in on how shipping fees were a brake on our business by simply asking customers and non-customers.
Here's where the oft-cited quote from Henry Ford is brought up as an... See more
One way to identify your invisible asymptotes is to simply ask your customers. As I noted at the start of this piece, at Amazon we honed in on how shipping fees were a brake on our business by simply asking customers and non-customers.
Here's where the oft-cited quote from Henry Ford is brought up as an... See more
Remains of the Day • Invisible asymptotes
When outcomes suffer, there's more and more pressure to identify the problem. There's more and more pressure to identify that single thing causing the problem. Finger-pointing increases. Scrutiny increases. Trust decreases. Transparency decreases. People become more territorial and more defensive.
As outcomes suffer, the team loses confidence in... See more
As outcomes suffer, the team loses confidence in... See more
TBM 256: The Slide
At the core, strategy is about focus, and most complex organizations don’t focus their resources. Instead, they pursue multiple goals at once, not concentrating enough resources to achieve a breakthrough in any of them.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy Quotes by Richard P. Rumelt
sari and
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
John Doerr • 8 highlights
amazon.com
Focus forces brutal prioritization
Making few bets forces you to make hard decisions. It’s extremely hard to measure the value of something against some abstract and absolute notion of value.
Proponents of diversification argue that it takes the edge off of making a mistake. That would be a good argument if people acted the same way independent of... See more
Making few bets forces you to make hard decisions. It’s extremely hard to measure the value of something against some abstract and absolute notion of value.
Proponents of diversification argue that it takes the edge off of making a mistake. That would be a good argument if people acted the same way independent of... See more