14th June 2011
Shrink and expand your focus....
`Do whatever you do intensely'
Robert Henri
In dictionary, shrinking and expanding may represent opposite meanings. But in real life they represent two states of minds which should coexist. If you observe experts and great people, they start as generalists and end up specialising in one area. They find out what is their `core competency' and work on that.
Time is a scarce and precious resource and we don't have the luxury of dissipating this scarce resource on many things and achieving nothing. If we have too many things to do, we will require a lot of time. Since time is a finite resource, we have to decide our critical priorities.
If you carefully notice, every movie or story will have a main theme and the entire story will revolve around it. You have to tell the story in less than 90 minutes, else people will not have the time and patience to watch the entire movie merely for the fact that someone has acted very well and someone has spent a lot of time and resources.
This is where `time management' skills become very relevant for success. Actually, time cannot be managed and what we mean by this term is managing our life. We need to fine tune our focus by asking the following critical questions:
· What's my life's Mission?
· What are the roles I need to take on to execute my Mission?
· In each of my roles, what are my long term, medium term and short term goals?
· What are those roles which I need to jettison to consolidate my time?
· What activities I need not do which will not feed my Life's mission?
· How am I going to work only 50% of time and produce 100% result in my chosen filed?
Try to answer the above question and you will understand what is meant by shrinking and expanding your focus!
N C Sridharan
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