Focus: What The Most Effective People Do2/22/2024 
What makes some people 10x more effective than others? How could you become more effective? In a word: Focus “Focus is why a river has more force than a swamp.” - 7 Practices of Effective Ministry Take a moment to visualize a swamp . . . with stagnant, smelly, slime-covered water that covers miles. That’s what our life is like if we don’t have focus. Stagnant. We aren’t going anywhere! Lack of focus makes us careless in our choices. Maybe we try to do everything. Or maybe we spend our time on the wrong things. Either way, if we don't focus on what is most important, then we will be spread too thin to make any lasting change. However, if we focus our limited resources on the best things, change happens. Be a river, not a swamp. This blog is all about Focus Management. When I was starting in leadership, one of the first books I read was “First Things First” by Stephen Covey. That book changed my life. (See a book summary HERE) Why? It taught me to prioritize. Before being in leadership, there were fewer distractions and opportunities. Leadership opens up thousands of distractions, opportunities, and problems that will drain your time and energy if you don’t learn to prioritize. The endless possibilities will make you ineffective if you spend your energy on the wrong things. Since that time, it has been a joy to see many of the principles of Focus in God’s Word. In this blog post, we will take a look at Nehemiah. What’s amazing about this story is that Jerusalem’s walls had been in ruins for 141 years. When God led Nehemiah to rebuild the walls, they were rebuilt in less than 2 months. When we are focused, and with God’s help, we can accomplish much in little time. 8 Principles To Help Us Focus: 1. Discover The first step to greater focus is discovering what God has called you to do. Discovering where God is leading us is often connected to what he has made us passionate about. Specifically, it is at the intersection of what God has made us passionate about and God’s passion to glorify Himself, love others, and redeem the lost. It’s doing what we love for God’s purposes, not our own. You can see Nehemiah’s passion when he heard the news about Jerusalem. He was heartbroken. “And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.’ As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days” (Nehemiah 1:3-4). Notice how Nehemiah describes this passion and burden. “Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:12). God laid it on Nehemiah’s heart to rebuild the wall. God put it in his heart! What has God given you a passion for? What has He burdened your heart with? Nehemiah discovered what God was calling him to do and focused on it. He joined what God was doing. When God is ready to work, He will put it in our hearts. God already has plans for what He is going to do through you! "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). God will give us the desire to join what He is doing. We aren’t making plans of what we will do for God! We don’t create direction and strategy, we discover it. The strategy is to follow the Lord, not figure things out. It is strategic dependence: a moment-by-moment dependence and communing with God. We are discovering what God has called us to do. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6). Am I discovering God’s will where God is leading and joining Him at work, or am I creating my own direction and strategy? (Read more about finding your direction) 2. Focused Prayer Before we do, we pray. Before Nehemiah made plans, he sought God. He started by stopping to ask God for help. “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today” (Nehemiah 1:11). Too often, we make our plans and then ask God to bless them. The problem is they aren’t God’s plans, they’re our plans. When we do this we treat God like a cosmic genie, asking Him to bless our plans. We must start with prayer. Plans forged in the absence of prayer will be carried out in the absence of God’s power. All the focus in the world will accomplish nothing if God isn’t with us! If we go without prayer, we go without power. Am I prioritizing prayer? 3. Prioritize Nehemiah focused on the task at hand. When he arrived, he said to the people: “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision” (Nehemiah 2:17). Nehemiah’s focus helped others prioritize. Focus is contagious. “So we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work…So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out (Nehemiah 4:6, 21). The results of prioritizing are incredible. “So the wall was finished …in fifty-two days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God” (Nehemiah 6:15-16). When we are focused and prioritize, and with God’s help, we can accomplish much in little time. Focus is all about prioritizing what is most important. These quotes have been helpful reminders: “The reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.” - Robert J. McKain -1 “You can do anything, but not everything.” - David Allen "If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority." -Karen Martin "If you don’t prioritize your life someone else will." - Greg Mckeown So how can we prioritize? Here is a helpful 4 part framework from John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0: “High Importance/High Urgency: Tackle these tasks first. High Importance/Low Urgency: Set deadlines for completion and fit these tasks into your daily routine. Low Importance/High Urgency: Find quick, efficient ways to get these tasks done with minimal personal involvement and time. If possible, delegate them. Low Importance/Low Urgency: If these tasks can be eliminated, then get rid of them. If they can be delegated, then find someone to do them. If you must do them, then schedule a one-hour block every week to chip away at them, but never schedule them during your prime time.” -2 The reason this is so helpful is because most things that come to us are in the Low Importance/High Urgency category. They seem important, but in the grand scheme of things aren’t. However, they will suck up all of our time leaving no time for the High Importance/Low Urgency things. Prioritize the important, not the urgent. If you can do this, most of your time management issues will disappear. To help you find what’s important, ask yourself: What is my primary vision & goals? What are the priorities to accomplish the vision? What are my next steps to accomplish the vision? What is the primary vision and goals for our team? 4. Plan Nehemiah made plans. “I went out by night by the Valley Gate to the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire” (Nehemiah 2:13). After careful inspection, Nehemiah divided the work. Different families tackled different parts of the wall (see Nehemiah 3). After you have identified what is important and the next steps, you have to plan for them. Tasks in the High Importance/Low Urgency category must be planned for. They won’t knock on our door or send us an email. We must plan for them. As Benjamin Franklin said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” The important things in life are our BIG ROCKS. You have probably heard the illustration about filling a jar with big rocks, pebbles, sand, and water. If you start with pebbles, sand, or water, you won’t have room for the big rocks. If you start with the rocks, then the pebbles, then the sand, and finally the water, you fit in far more. The same is true in life. Big rocks need to go in first. If we don’t plan, the important but not urgent tasks won’t get done. Our day will be filled with the pebbles, sand, and water tasks of life. We will be busy, but accomplish little. Planning takes time. This means you actually have to plan to plan. Here's what has helped me: I plan Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily. My wife and I used to sit down together to plan our week on Monday morning, but recently have started planning on Friday for the coming week. This has been extremely helpful because we aren’t thinking about it over the weekend and we hit the ground running on Monday with a clear plan. I ask: What are the big rocks that need to be planned into my calendar? (Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily) Big rocks include:
Around each rock, make sure you add margin. For daily tasks, assign a time block or set an alarm for when you will do each of the tasks. I have found it helpful to not only have a “to-do” list, but also a “done-for-the-day” list. A “to-do” list is never-ending. It isn’t prioritized. A “done-for-the-day” list is taken from your longer “to-do” list, but it is only the things you are prioritizing TODAY. One of the benefits of a “done-for-the-day” list is the small win you get each day when you finish what you planned to do. With a “to-do” list as our measuring rod, every day feels like a failure because so many things are unfinished. Use both a “to-do” and a “done-for-the-day”. Programs like Microsoft “to-do” have a simple button to add things from your “to-do” list to a screen called “My Day”. Until I began prioritizing and planning my life, I constantly let people down, most importantly, my family. The urgent things kept filling up the space which meant I neglected the things that were truly important to me. I would get focused on something and forget to do what I had promised my wife or kids. Having clear blocks of time on my calendar with margin around each has helped. Another help has been adding alarms to calendar events. If something is really important to remember, or a repeating task, I use an app called Alarmed. It can remind you ever day, hour, 15 minutes, 5 minutes...or every minute. It helps me to prioritize what needs done! Find what works for you. However, some things should not have alerts: Email. Turning off alerts on my emails was one of the best things I have done. My brain isn't constantly bombarded. If email is setting your direction and can interrupt your day anytime, you won't be able to focus. Blocking off (batching) a couple times a day to focus on email and clear your inbox is a very helpful practice. This allows you to give emails the attention you need, but then focus on other things and not bounce back and forth. Your brain will thank you and your stress will decrease. Once we have prioritized what we need to do, it acts like a filter to thousands of daily decisions and distractions. Instead of looking at each decision independently, run it through these filters: 1. How does this help me accomplish my priorities? 2. How does this line up with my values? Many unimportant things will immediately be eliminated using these filters. What are the big rocks that need to be planned into my calendar? 5. Simplify Nehemiah broke down the big task into smaller, more manageable tasks. Each family worked on their section of the wall. Some people moved the rock, some people built the wall. Everyone knew what they needed to do. Big tasks can seem overwhelming until broken down into manageable chunks. Break big tasks into small tasks. Think through all the small steps that are involved in getting something done. Then, prioritize those steps. So often we don’t tackle something because it seems so daunting. When I was writing my book, breaking down the steps was extremely helpful. I put a sheet of paper on the wall with all the chapters and gave myself a few weeks for each chapter. Once I checked off each chapter, I couldn’t pick it back up until after the manuscript went to the editor. (Otherwise, I would have kept modifying it for another 10 years!) Again, apps can help. In Microsoft To-Do, Apple Reminders, or Google Tasks you can add sub-tasks under each main task. This breaks big tasks into smaller tasks. Then, prioritize them by dragging them in the right order. Seeing a clear list in simple steps can be very empowering. It gives you clarity on what you need to focus on. It helps you know what to do next. What big tasks do I need to break into smaller tasks? 6. Uncomplicate Did Nehemiah’s rebuilt wall look like the wall did before it was destroyed? Probably not. But did it protect the people? Absolutely. Sometimes, we never start something or make progress on it because we have too high of a goal. To help with this, we must define what “finished” looks like. “How will we know when we are done?” -3 What does “done” look like? What does “success” look like? To help you determine what “done” looks like, clarify the goal. What’s the goal? Perfection or useful? Go for useful. Seeking perfection leads to paralysis. In the end, perfection paralysis has the same outcome as procrastination…nothing happens. What is the main goal of each task? Could I simplify what is done but still accomplish the main goal? 7. Eliminate The workers didn’t go home or even change their clothes at night, they stayed fixed on the task. They stayed guarding the city. They eliminated everything that wasn’t essential. “So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand” (Nehemiah 4:23). As the laborers worked, they carried a spear in one hand and their load in another. “Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other” (Nehemiah 4:17) It takes focus and courage to say “no”, but every time we say “yes” to something, we say “no” to something else. While it may feel bad emotionally to say “no” to an opportunity or request, saying “yes” ensures we will feel bad later…for much longer. As Jerzy Gregorek said, “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” A missionary speaker once said: "There are enough good things to keep you busy for 26 hours a day. Your job is to find the BEST things." Good is the enemy of best. Staying busy is easy, it’s like carelessly eating everything that crosses our path. Doing the best things is hard, it’s like carefully eating only healthy foods that optimize our health. It’s our choice: Be careful in our decisions by focusing on the best and eliminating the rest, or be undisciplined and careless in our choices. If we eliminate nothing, we actually eliminate the most important things which can only be accomplished by focus. Without focus we won’t have the time or energy to commit to them. What is not essential? Am I focusing on the best things? 8. Overcome Fear When Nehemiah set out to build the wall, he faced outer opposition and inner fear. “And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night”(Nehemiah 4:8-9). Whenever we are doing something worthwhile, Satan doesn’t like it and will oppose it. We will face opposition from many directions, he will use fear, doubt, conflict, and a host of other things to disrupt our progress. Those who opposed the wall tried to make Nehemiah fear: “Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid” (Nehemiah 6:14). Our greatest battle is the battle with fear. It is not opposition that defeats us, it is our fear that gives in to the opposition. If we lose the battle with fear, the war is over. If we fear not, we will keep pressing on. How do we battle the emotion of fear? Fear conquers us by getting us to focus on all the “what ifs”. It draws our focus away from what we need to do. Satan uses fear and many other things to distract us and take our focus off the most important things. Our inner fear makes us think we will fail. Don’t give up. Don’t quit. Remember God and keep pressing on. “And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, ‘Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes’” (Nehemiah 4:14). Like Nehemiah, we must stay focused on God, and second on what we need to do. We must focus on our circle of responsibility and not worry about what God alone controls! Prayer and action go hand in hand. Focus on God. Focus on your role. Do the work. Often, the things we are afraid of doing can serve as a compass to point us in the right direction. The reason we are afraid is because we long to do it, but fear failure. We know it is what we were made to do, but we let fear hold us back. Don’t let it! Walk towards fear, not away from it. Stop making excuses. Use fear as a compass to steer you in the right direction! (Read more about using fear as a compass) What are you afraid to do? What’s behind that emotion of fear? Conclusion Do you want to be more effective in life, leadership, and ministry? Learn from Nehemiah. Focus. It’s what the most effective people do. Serving together, Kyle Want a tool to help you plan and prioritize? Take our Regional Strategic Planning Tool and tweak it for your own personal or ministry use! The gap with praying hands between the vision and the priorities is to remind us that God alone can accomplish the vision. The gap is filled with God and Prayer. (NOTE: If using the .docx file, it works better if Word is downloaded to your computer, not the online version of Word. If using the Excel file with a team, it helps to protect the sheet and lock all the cells except the ones people fill in.)
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1. Quoted in Maxwell, John C.. Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 (Developing the Leader Series) (p. 28). HarperCollins Leadership. Kindle Edition.
2. Maxwell, John C.. Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 (Developing the Leader Series) (p. 33). HarperCollins Leadership. Kindle Edition. 3. Mckeown, Greg . Essentialism (p. 190). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. |
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