We, as humans, always love the shiny new object. We always seem to gravitate to the new because, well, it holds the promise of something greater. More money for instance. Or, just a fresh, exciting project. Often when the project I am working on at present becomes tedious or boring or downright difficult, it’s easy for me to think about a new thing and how that might be the solution for _____, whether that blank is money, happiness, fulfillment, etc. Wow, getting a bit existential here. Point is, a multitude of distractions can get in the way of our present tasks and can easily stop us from powering through whatever it is that’s hard or difficult in the moment, even though that thing is important.
I’ve heard of people balancing two or even five startups at the same time. I’ve heard of people working on multiple ideas to ‘A/B test’ what works and what doesn’t. But how effective is this strategy, really?
Warren Buffett, among others, believe that the true path to success stems from focus. He claims that focus is not saying ‘yes’ to the thing you’re meant to be focusing on; it is rather saying no to everything else. Focus is thus about saying no to the one hundred good ideas out there so that you can spend all of your energy on the one exceptional idea.
But surely it’s possible to divide your focus. I thought that was the whole idea of compartmentalizing, and the reason why you could put in an amazing workday, have a killer workout, and spend quality time with friends and family at the end of it all. But I’ve decided that focus comes not from the amount of time you spend on a task (or even limiting the tasks you do in your day/week/life)… it’s all about the intensity at which you perform those tasks. Focus through intensity is the key to truly maximise the chances of ‘success’ — whatever that means for you.
I’m going to share two short anecdotes about intensity:
Mark Zuckerberg Buying Instagram
Once it became clear that Instagram was about to majorly disrupt the social media landscape, big companies began swooping in for the kill. Twitter offered to acquire Instagram for $500 million, to which CEO Kevin Systrom tentatively said yes. Sequoia, one of the largest VCs in the world, then knocked on Insta’s door and said “woah woah woah, rather than let Twitter buy you out, what if we just inject $500 million and let you stay independent.” Now, Systrom had a dilemma. This became even more complicated when Zuck called him up saying “hey, no big deal but Facebook wants to buy you.” Not only did Facebook want to buy Instagram; it needed to. At the time, Facebook didn’t have the same capacity for photo sharing and not acquiring Insta could have easily meant the demise of Facebook as a platform. But Systrom wasn’t convinced by the Zuckerberg’s phone call. So, later, Zuck called him again. “Whatever your highest offer is, I’ll double it. Come to my house and we’ll chat it over,” said Mark.
So, Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom are discussing the acquisition of Instagram in Mark’s house. This is on Easter Sunday as well, so Twitter and Sequoia both have the day off, and both of whom are thinking that Instagram will come to them the following day with a ‘yes.’ Kevin says he needs some time to speak to his lawyers and think about it, but Mark doesn’t let him leave. “Take as much time as you need, but let’s both agree that we’re going to stay here, in my house, until a decision is made— whether that is yes, or no.”
48 hours later, Facebook buys Instagram for a staggering $1 billion, the highest valuation ever given to a social media company. How did Mark do it?
The price tag was certainly a factor. But, it was ultimately Mark Zuckerberg’s intensity— the ability to go 48 hours without thinking about or doing anything else. He had his entire legal team come to the house and work through the night. He only ever got up to use the bathroom (and maybe have the occasional snack). He secured one of the most important deals in the history of big tech by focusing on what he wanted to stopping at nothing until he got there. Mark struck at the perfect moment and, with an intense bout of negotiation, persuasion, and attrition, he made it happen.
Sylvester Stallone Making Rocky
Poor Sylvester Stallone wasn’t getting casted for any roles. He didn’t have the Hollywood face. The classic smile. So what did he do? He said “fine, I’ll make my own movie. And cast myself.”
The only issue was that he didn’t know how to write screenplays. And he HATED it. But, he locked himself in his house and in just three days churned out the first draft of the script for Rocky. Three days! How?
According to some sources, he painted his windows black so he wouldn’t know what time of day it was. Whether it was time to ‘eat dinner’ or ‘go to sleep’ did not matter. All that mattered was the one task at hand: writing the script for Rocky. Allegedly, he wished more than anything during those three days that someone would just call him in order to take his mind of the tedious task of writing. But, he unplugged all the phones so that, again, there was nothing to divert his focus. This focus and intensity through which he created Rocky is a critical lesson in why tuning out the distractions can have incredible results. Perhaps, it was the only way he would have ever gotten results.
Conclusion:
Maybe, to achieve results, you often have to paint the windows black. Maybe, it’s time to take a lesson from the greats and work on finding the nexus of focus and intensity. I know there are times in all of our lives where we want the shiny new object. Or we are thinking about anything else but the task at hand. Or we glance at our phone because it has lit up with something “interesting.” But, when it comes down to it, depriving ourselves of those hundreds of little things which take us away from the big thing might be the only way to turn that big thing into a great thing.