How to choose what to focus on in 2024

What to focus on is a tricky one. And it's so important because what you achieve in your business is as much a factor of what you say yes to as it is what you say no to. And I wasted a lot of time in my first few years of business chasing all of those sparkly ideas. I'd start one thing, and then another idea would pop up. And so I'd spend a few days on that and then something else would pop up, and I'd go down a little rabbit hole researching this new idea that I had, and I'd come out of couple of weeks of that jumping around with nothing to show for it. I've also wasted a lot of time trying to do a million big projects all at once.

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What should you focus on in 2024 for your business?

I've tried to create two courses, write a book and launch a third course all at the same time. That was the end of 2020. Right? Now, while we think we're being more productive, we actually end up completing none of those things, which means that we can't have any impact with them or make any money from them. So the key is to focus on one thing through to completion, then start on the next thing, and then start on the next thing. We're completing things rather than starting things and having all of these half complete projects. So I'm going to walk you through a couple of tips on how I choose what to focus on in each year, because I really do struggle to focus honestly. I get so many ideas and each idea feels so urgent and like I have to do it now before anybody else steals my idea, and it derails me from whatever it is that I need to be working on at that time.

So this is how I choose what to focus on.

 

Step 1. Start with your bigger goals

 

I think about what do I want to achieve? Do I want financial freedom, time freedom, massive impact? What am I aiming for? And it's okay. It's okay for your why to change. It's okay for your reason that you're in business to change. When I started out a few years ago, my why was so that I could… Well, at the start, it was so I could get out of my corporate job. And then it became so that I could work full-time for myself and not have a part-time job. Then it became so that I could travel. Now it's so that I can have even more financial freedom. I can spend my time working on bigger projects and so that I can buy a beach house.

That's my current focus. Right? So it's okay for the vision that is driving you, it's okay for that to change and evolve as you do. And I would recommend regularly checking back in. Why am I doing this? What is my goal? What am I aiming for? Because once you know what you're aiming for, then you can be more intentional about what you're doing to get there.

 

Step 2. Be realistic about how much time you have

 

This one is difficult. This one is really difficult because whenever I'm planning something out, I'm usually super optimistic about how quickly I can get stuff done. And what tends to happen is I don't get things done like I'm intending to, and it's normal, right? You're not going to be a hundred per cent every single day. You're not always going to be productive. You might need to rest. You might need to take time off. You might get sick.

You need to under budget your tasks rather than overbudget your tasks. Leave a bit of buffer space in there. And also we don't want to burn out. I mean, this is the sad reality for so many entrepreneurs is they give everything 180% and then they get exhausted. They burn out. So we want to have a little bit of buffer time in there for rest in case you get sick, in case you're not 110% productive, like you plan to be.

 

Step 3. Map out your priorities

 

What I would recommend next is trying is mapping out a little quadrant. So we've got a little grid, a little axes, and we've got time to implement, so low amount of time to implement, high amount of time to implement. And then on the Y axis, we've got the overall impact, so low impact, high impact. And we want to categorize tasks as low time to implement and high impact, high time to implement, high impact, low impact, high time to implement, low impact, low time to implement.

So we want to have those four different categories of tasks. And we want to start with the low hanging fruit. So the ones that are going to have the highest impact and the lowest time to implement. And now when I say highest impact, you get to define impact. For you, if that impact is bringing more money into your business, great, that's impact. If for you, impact is the number of people it's going to help, that's your definition of impact. But you get to define that definition of impact based on your vision and your goal that you've set, right? So the ones that take the least amount of time to implement, but will have the biggest relative impact, these are a really good to start focusing because then once you've ticked these things off and they'll be the quickest and easiest to tick off, then you can focus on that next thing.

So for example, for me creating the Launch Magic course content the first time I created it, that took a lot of work. But now that it's done, the content is there for the future times that I launch it and I can now focus on creating other things knowing that each time I launch, my Launch Magic content is done, and when I launch, it's going to bring money into my business.

 

Step 4. Think about what do you want to do

 

So what do you really want to do? Not what do you think you have to do because everyone else is doing it, or what do you think you have to do because if you don't do it right now, somebody else is going to steal your idea, not what you think you have to do because your audience wants it the most.

But what do you feel inspired to do? What do you feel excited to do? Because when it gets boring and challenging, the stuff that you really deep down want to do, that's going to be the stuff you persist with. The stuff that you're doing because you feel like you have to do it, that's going to be really hard, and it is going to get challenging and it is going to get boring. A great book is called The Dip by Seth Godin. And he talks about how basically every creative project goes through the dip. And that is that stage where it gets challenging and it gets boring, or you start to see shiny objects that feel more exciting. When you get to that stage, I want you to remind yourself why you are doing it. What is that vision? What is that why? What is the reason behind what you're doing?

Connect back with that, and it'll be a lot easier to keep going because yeah, the voice in your head is going to lie to you and tell you like, “Ah, this project's too hard. Nobody's going to want it anyway. But this project over here, this other shiny project, if I start that now, it'll be exciting and fun, and it's going to make so much more money.” But when you start that project, the exact same thing's going to happen, and you're going to end up exactly where you are right now in that dip.

 

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