Focus

The difference between average results and exceptional ones is what you avoid.

Be quick to say no and slow to say yes. Saying yes consumes time. Saying no creates time.

Never say yes on the spot. Always give yourself some space. Make it a rule. Tell people. That’s what Daniel Kahneman does. When he’s on the phone, he says, ‘my rule is I never say... See more

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.

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

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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 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

The trick is to collide your mental model with the outside world as often as possible. This is what exploring does.

One of my (many) contrarian beliefs is that we do not have strong enough preferences. We often blame social media or the speed of information as the reason why we’re easily distracted, but the real reason behind our inability to focus has less to do with the sheer quantity of media and more to do with our laziness when it comes to distinguishing... See more