Narrow Your Focus To Get More Done in 6 Steps! – Business and Life Lessons from The Alchemist!

In this Thanksgiving week, I would like to really focus on things that have helped grow our business. I am so grateful for so much and to so many and one of those is Paulo Coelho for his book The Alchemist. A book that teaches among other lessons; how to Narrow your Focus for maximum results…!
Do you make your target what you Want to, Be, Do or Have? If not, then you need to narrow your focus down to that exact thing! And today’s post will help you do that. A lesson I learnt from The Alchemist, buy it on amazon here. I’ve read thrice and this time I felt that aha moment…a proper light bulb went off in my head! I am bringing this lesson practically into this 21st Century Home Business and Network Marketing Space….
You agree that: You, Simon Cowell and I all have the same 24 hrs in a day, so it follows then that if we want massive results in any area of our lives like Simon, we are gonna have to Develop some kind of Tunnel Vision or blinkers….hang on bear with me. In other words narrow our focus to that one thing until we achieve it…Huh!
As a blogger you should definitely narrow your focus in your categories and niche, so you attract a target audience!
When Pauli did his PHD he zoned in on Environmental Engineering and went further into Water Management! He then also narrowed in on the management side too. His Current Consultancy benefits and our lifestyle reflect this Laser Focus! So let’s agree too that overnight success actually takes years!
In this article, I want to share with you the lessons from our lives in the professional world and also from The Alchemist, on how to narrow your focus, and get productive in your business. Ready?
Let’s get started!
Check out our Short Video Tutorial on How to Narrow Your Focus and Get Your Desired Results:
#1. Persistence and The Value of Narrowing Your focus
Life is designed to test our staying power, this is a lesson Santiago learnt early in his life. Yet many an entrepreneur give up at the slightest whiff of challenges. See if you believe in your dreams persistence must be your garment UNTIL…
If you watched the above Video you will agree on the Painful and Graphic example I gave on Focused Action Vis a Vis General Action! So let me Ask you a Question:
How do you spend your productive energy? It doesn’t matter how super hyper you wake up in the morning; we all have a certain amount of energy available to us daily in certain core hours. You can either spend your energy on a variety of different things to average or no effect. Or you can persistently focus it on a Few Targeted and important activities and create the results you want and desire. And also have a great positive impact on others. So this is what we mean by Narrow your focus: i.e. create the fastest and most results in the shortest amount of time. This brings a Good feeling which in turn attracts more of what you want! See how that works? Okay, next we must…
#2. Decide What To Focus On- And Become That co-creator or Alchemist !
Okay according to Wikipedia Alchemy is where by matter is trans-mutated into another matter altogether…something more valuable! What has this got to do with narrowing our focus?
Well as someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, you can use your talents and abilities to grow, develop and create something amazing in your life and the lives of lots more around you. So why not become the Alchemist? Narrow your focus down to what you love/like to do and what you are good at, Skill up and Apply yourself consistently to doing that thing – This is literally you practicing Alchemy… and creating your treasure!
I see you spreading yourself thin, undertaking a wide variety of actions when it comes to growing your home based or online business, or even accomplishing your corporate career goals. I used to do that, a heck of a lot!
So if you have watched the Video above you have got the Solution to what you need to do, to Heal yourself of this problem i.e. My HARSH Medicine for that malaise. If you haven’t watched it, I encourage you to grab a pen and Paper and Do so right now…I can wait… Here is that link again
Okay now …
Look carefully at that list and determine what the 3 things are a Must do for your target results and which are “Nice to dos” and frankly the time stealers. The first 3 are your High-Value Tasks and are the activities you want to focus your Core and majority of your time on.
#3. Never Quit – How to Decide What To Narrow your Focus On.
Are you taking care of the Oil in the spoon, while also taking note of what’s going on around you? The beauty, the works of art. The love, laughter, the good things, that actually make life worth living? Well I definitely imagine that when you took inventory of what you do, you totally forgor to include things like, Breaks, Lunch time, Meditation, exercise, Time out to breath, love, lugh, feed the body and soul! Well hehe is the lesson that Santiago really learnt!
So I did too. When I first took inventory of the activities I do, I realized that I was very inefficient, yet I wasn’t enjoying myself either. I did exercise when I could, I didn’t really meditate. I never did affirmations on a regular basis…This was 2 yrs ago. My daily routine went something like below:
- Check my mail…for 2 hrs lol
- Check Social Media another 2 hrs
- Create Content including videos, blog posts, post my link all over social media
- Checking my affiliate accounts…hoping something changed!
- Tweaking web designs – I am a web designer
- reading other blogs and commenting on some
- Self-development, webinars, tutorials, read a book..(I sometimes got lost in this too)
- Exercise if time permitted…huh!
- Watch some TV …
We are in the business of providing value to others and get paid to do so…! So I narrowed down my Income Producing or High Value Tasks:
- Create Info product – Was done and now only needs updating when necessary!
Now replaced by team training!
- Create & Promote Content – Including Videos, Blog posts, Podcasts, Scoping
- Prospecting & Marketing aka Lead generation and making Sales.
The more time I spend on these tasks, the faster our business has grown. We are receiving great feedback from our audience and subscribers on how much we are helping them grow. See one message I received recently! And I get at least 2-3 per week similar messages.
So guess what we’ve learnt to narrow our focus on these activities. Just as Santiago decided to narrow his focus to working for the crystal Merchant to grow the income he needed to travel to Egypt to find his treasure!
#4. How to succeed in your business by narrowing your focus. How we did it!
It’s quite simple narrow your focus, zone in on the 3 high value activities and get them done daily, no excuses. Focus on those tasks like your business success depended on them and IT DOES! It takes a lot of focused, persistent activities to grow a successful business. So if you are to put in the work, it might as well be as targeted as possible for maximum.
If you work 9-5 or shifts, decide how much time you want to devote to your business daily. Then apply the 80/20 principle. How? Allocate 80% of that time to your 3 tasks above. The Pareto rule has proven to be uncannily true for most life situations.
By focusing our time and actions we did managed to create and launch our Signature Info Product The Secret Affiliate Roadmap for home based business entrepreneurs, network and affiliate marketers and small business owners! We also cut back on our daily blogging to 3 days a week. In order to be able to also Prospect, Market, Advertise, And create great content for our audience. Our Journey to Build a Super Authority Blog and Brand and we are loving this journey! In fact we are now working on a niche Travel blog COMING SOON. For the traveler who loves the finer things in life using MLSP Sites…(Speaking of MLSP Sites, if you are not leveraging this resource, you must be absolutely raking in the leads and sales or you are absolutely missing out. Grab it here now and start generating leads like the pro you are!)
So we have been productive with the highest value task on our list than we’d been for the entire year before this.
We now have an asset that can help grow not just our brand but help other entrepreneurs grow their business too. It doesn’t take much extra effort on our part anymore. All it took was for us to narrow our focus to increase our brand efficiency.
#5. After you Narrow your Focus, Are other tasks neglected?
Remember Santiago did do a few things along the way to get to his dream and find His Pot of treasure right? So clearly some other things have to be done including a few detours on our journey to our desired destiny. It’s called “Living in the gap.”
So no we didn’t ditch the other tasks, we simply prioritized, zoned in, narrowed our focus. Remember the 20% “Productive core time” left over…aha this is where its spent. Many are the seemingly mundane daily business admin stuff that keeps our business ticking over! The nice to dos and here is how we tweaked our priorities to fit these tasks in!
We outsource some of these tasks and thus free my time to focus on the above 3 HVTs. Spread some of that money to others. Bless them too and you too will be blessed. We also batch process and deal with the majority of the same type tasks in a focused period of time, thus accomplishing more too. All other activities are frankly not useful and have been eliminated from my life. As I also have to be a mom, wife, friend and LIVE too.
- Check email once a day time that’s it I learnt that I was wasting a ton of time. So It was absolutely necessary for me. To do this. I turn my phone on silent so I don’t have to hear notifications of whatsapp, emails or messenger either. Unroll.me is an awesome tool to keep my email clean Paul introduced me to this one & listed it on the 37 useful websites
- Web disconnect. I love browsing the internet. It’s part of why I am good at what I do too. But I have to narrow mu focus to just the websites that I need during my core hours. This helps avoid getting drawn into web browsing and clicking link after link wasting time. If it’s not on my schedule, it won’t get done period.
- Time Myself: E.ggtimer is a wonderful lil tool. I actually use it to time my scopes too. So I also do the “Nice to do” tasks in time. Or you can get so involved in the high value tasks you’re your brand development suffers!
If you would like to Listen or download This definitive guide to Focusing and Brief Review again without having to read this article, Tune in Below
6. Narrow Your Focus, Lessons from The Alchemist: It’s a Wrap!
You want to take a long hard look at the people you wish to emulate and ask yourself what they do. You need to get uncomfortable. I tell you now Paul and I have gotten pretty uncomfortable in the past 2 years to build our business. We have also learnt to narrow our focus and scaled down on our “Leisure travels” to spend more on self-development.
If you spoke to lots of people who knew me years ago, most will tell you I have changed, for the better! Like Abram changed to Abraham I too grew into the Julie Syl you know. Most of my old school mates know me as easy going happy go lucky “Sylvia” Or Syl Jules. I have changed a great deal, and I am opening myself here in the hope that I am inspiring others too. I have done a complete overhaul towards that better version of me” that I am happy to look in the mirror and say I love you girl. Another lesson I have learnt from The Alchemist. To love me & be happy with who I am! Stop and smell the roses, to go where I am appreciated and celebrated.
So I would very much like to see you grow to the awesome leader you deserve to be. Time for you to narrow your Focus by asking yourself these questions:
- What are the 3 MUST Dos, most Income Producing Activities in your business?
- What activities do you find yourself wasting time on?
- What steps are you taking (or going to take) to narrow your focus and change your life and others today?
- Which book have you recently read that has impacted your life?
Please do share if you don’t mind in the comments below! If you got value, do feel free to Like, Share and tag a friend.
You know you deserve more…
Live. Learn. Love
Julie Syl Kalungi
Skype: Julie.Kalungi1
Email: julieatJuleskalpauli[dot]com
Considering Coaching? Check out our Work with Me tab and Survey where we Help People Everyday.1
PS: IF YOUR UPLINE DOES NOT HAVE A STEP-BY-STEP BLUEPRINT FOR ONLINE MARKETING SUCCESS, CHECK THIS OUT (UNLESS YOU ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY LEADS) – CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS
Wonderful post. Also, I love The Alchemist! 🙂
Hi Tracy,
Absolutely We love the Alchemist too. A very quick and impactful read! 🙂
I’m such a perfectionist. So when I set deadlines for myself, I get even more anxious; because when I realize that the product I’m producing (be it a research paper for one of my classes or a blog post) isn’t up to my standards I freak out. I am always worried that it’s never good enough, for whatever reason. You have some good tips here. Now I just have to figure out how to downgrade my perfectionism a little to actually accomplish my goals. =)
Perfectionism is a kind of FEAR alisha
Its important what we listen to in order to work on our barriers. Daily You gotta look you in the face aka mirror and say I AM ENOUGH.
Perfectionism is literally your monkey mind saying You arent enough, its up to you to reinforce that you are daily….Why do you feel that way? You have to dig inside and find out why and then deal with that gremlin and move forward! You are ENOUGH huni.
Funny that I should be reading this today as this was my theme for the day – focus! Great article and podcast Julie!
I always tell everyone to FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS! My husband is an insanely intelligent guy who can’t sit still so he is a man of MANY MANY talents which is amazing, but I feel like at times he spreads himself toooooo thin – which isn’t a good thing!
Help Him Focus, and Zone in GiGi.
We can have many talents, But each one of them needs a given amount if time to bear the fruits we ant from it. You got this girl! 🙂
I think its important to stay off facebook and such when trying to meet deadlines. That is my biggest problem.
Hey Kristen,
If that is your biggest problem then indeed Shut social media down when you wish to focus!
~JUlie Syl
I think in the world of social media we can get so caught up in getting distracted. Having a clear focus is important!
Hey Ashleigh,
Glad you agree, we have so much choice today, we have to learn hwo to Focus on what matters to our lives an how it impacts others too. Tanks for stopping by, we appreciate you!
~J Syl
Such a wonderful article with lots of good suggestions to stay focused & getting more done as well at the same time. I do need to narrow myself a lot more to the get the best out of it.
Knowing where to put your focus is definitely the way to get more done. If you are all over the place what you intended will never get done.
So very True Robin,
Good to see you here gain 🙂
~Julie Syl
I have learned that, in order for a blog to succeed, I have to focus on social media. That’s the new means of promotion in this world, and that’s where the money lies for bloggers.
Glad you have zoned in on Social Media Dawn, and I hope you also have zoned in on a Specific Media platform 🙂
~Julie Syl
I like these tips, especially number 3. Never quit in anything you do! You are so right Julie!
Hey Nicole,
Glad you agree and thanks for dropping by! 🙂
~Julie Syl
Stay focus, that is very important. I like your tips here,
Glad you like Nicole. Keep rocking too! 🙂
~J&PK
Oh, this is a very helpful post. Sometimes there are lots of things that need to be done but we almost forgot to focus.
Hi Nikki,
Its killer to forget to focus with so many gadgets to help us o that egg.timer your trusty cell phone alarm, our diary, google calender…
Try these out and get that focus hat firmly on!
~julie Syl
This makes a lot of sense. I think deciding what exactly to narrow your focus onto could be difficult. It’s hard to let go of things that have been sidetracking you.
Hi Liz,
When you know what you want in life, You WILL FOCUS. Its when we aent sure so we keep thinking this and that is it..drifting….a killer of dreams!
Narrow in ZOne in and Get what you want from life!
~Julie Syl
I have a hard time narrowing my focus. I have so many interest!
Ashley love…thats called Drifting..wont do you any good. You must be able to shut things out to do what you must so you can enjoy that variety of interests! 🙂
~Julie Syl
The Alchemist is one of my favorite books of all time. It is filled with so many power messages.
It sure is Cindy and I love Listening to it now. Isnt the Internet a wonderful thing 🙂
~Julie Syl
Great post, packed full of value and good advice. Love your analogies and stories.
Hi Chris,
I am Glad you got value too 🙂 Keep rocking!
~Julie Syl
This is such a wonderful post. I think it’s so important to make sure to focus to get things done. My biggest problem is not getting things done when Facebook is open. If I have a post to do, I’ll exit out of everything else so I can focus on that.
Hi Kathy,
You are on the right track gal 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
~J&PK
Multi-tasking is great but only to a certain extent. I would rather focus on one task at hand than do everything all at once. That never ends well. And the same goes when you’re running a business, especially when you’re running a business. I think your tips are awesome and it makes a lot of sense!
Hi Elizabeth, Its good to know we agree on Multi Tasking. 🙂
~J&PK
awesome tips you shared here julie, thank u
You are most welcome Sheena.
Keep rocking!
You know I always took on a lot and honestly still do . I have to make sure I revamp and look at the tasks I have. Also a big thing is to not answer right away. lol I always want to help so Ithen I say yes. Great post and great points.
Hey Tanya,
I do feel you. You need to GIVE YOUR TIME to those that DESERVE IT, not necessarily those that need it!
Narrow your focus to what YOU NEED too. You Matter.
Thanks for your comment
Pauli!
Heh Julie, great blog you have here. Lots of great value you share, awesome!
And yes, focus is primarily saying NO to everything which is not in line with your BIG HAIRY goal.
Thanks so much,
Anita Vroonland
Hi Anita,
It sure is essential for an entrepreneur to Narrow Your Focus on to that Hairy goal 🙂
Love your play on words…thanks for your comment!
Julie
Very cool Julie! Another awesome blog.
Thank you Brittany.
This is my favorite of all the blogs of yours that I’ve read. Perhaps because I like The Alchemist book and saw Paulo Coelho interviewed by Oprah, perhaps because you give such good tips about prospecting, perhaps both. At any rate, I thank you for the material you present — and the graphic presentation (LOL).
Absolutely, the more we focus on our market, the more people we attract to us.
You’re the best Julie!
Awww Carol, what a kind compliment. Loved the Alchemist and i simply seem to see things in away most others dont.
So I felt a real need to share these insights as a Business Admin Tutor offline, It simply fell into place exactly how It impacted my life!
It also felt right to share 😉
We are truly glad to serve you and that you are getting value too.
You really are appreciated.
Julie Syl & Paul!
Wow these are some really good points! I need to narrow down a little more I think!
Way to go Teresa.
The more you focus and target, hone and polish, the better your business life and all other areas of your life will be.
We are not born to spread ourselves thin!
Thanks for stopping by
Pauli
Thanks for this! We got to narrow our focus so we do not spread ourselves thin, and we focus on income producing activities. Thanks for the value Julie!
Hey Ade,
You definitely get it and are applying we see you bro! Thanks for taking the time!
Pauli!
Now that you have narrowed your focus the sky is the limit for you! See you up there! Namaste 🙂
Hey Claudette,
WE live in a LIMITLESS WORLD 🙂 the Sky is only what our Visible eyes and minds can see…
I see so much further its super exciting.Thanks for your comment for sure. See you at the top
~Namaste~
Love how you took the inspiration from “The Alchemist” and made it into powerful tips to help in our everyday lives. Paulo Coelho is a spiritual wizard and has much wisdom for us all to take from reading his books. Each of us will find our own take-away and I appreciate how yours was on focus and how you are using it to help others. Thanks!
Hi Beverly,
Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. And for taking the time to drop in.
Hope you will share your insights on The Alchemist with us soon! Or a book that has impacted your life!
Julie
These are really great tips, Julie. As you found, when I focused on the 3 Must-Dos of the day, it revolutionized my work schedule and brought success in leaps and bounds.
Good stuff!
Hi Susan,
It sure is a matter of focusing our positive energy and actions on what we desire.
Glad you are growing in leaps and bounds 🙂
Great post Julie. Paulo really gets it right when he talks about focus because what we put our attention to grows. Understanding what you want and keeping your laser focus on how you are going to achieve that makes sense because a scattered mind goes in all directions and accomplishes nothing. Thanks for sharing.
Ohhh so glad you get it too David. Love sharing wit like minded chaps!
Lets Focus and build our dreams hey!
Pauli