Focus

If you look around, you’ll notice the people and organizations moving the fastest are the focused ones. Not only do they focus on a few ideas, but within the scope of those ideas, they are able to focus on the key variables.

Identifying the variables that matter comes with focus. When you commit to living in a problem, you understand things about... See more

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

Focus accelerates the accumulation of skills and accurate world models. In open-ended domains, such as writing, relationships, or business, there is nearly endless room for skill growth.

We can't build a sustainable business by chasing every opportunity.

A sustainable business is strategically constrained. Its leaders know what the business is and, more importantly, what it's not.

Jobs would often test people, asking them, “how many things have you said no to?” Ive was up to the task of answering, only he didn’t mean it, and Jobs read right through him.

I would have these sacrificial things, because I wanted to be very honest about it. And so I’d say, “Well, I said no to this and no to that.” But he knew that I wasn’t

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