Alisa Cohn - How to Focus Like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates

What do Warren Buffett and Bill Gates attribute their success to? It is not intelligence. It is not persistence or grit. It's one word: focus. Focus, focus, focus, focus. They were in a group of really successful people. The question was asked, what is the secret to your success? And both of them, without collaborating, without knowing each was writing it, wrote the word focus.

A group of about 20 write down on a sheet of paper one word that they thought accounted for their success. Bill and I, who didn't know what the other one was writing down, we both wrote down the same word, which was focus.

So if you want the key to your success, focus. Here are 2 ideas for you to focus. Number 1, cancel 30% of your meetings. Audit your meetings carefully. See what you're adding value to and where you're creating value and see what makes no sense for you, where you're not creating any value, where you're not adding value and find a way to get it off your calendar. And then what do you do in that time that you freed up? Read, follow your curiosity, talk to intelligent people. That's gonna help you figure out what your area of focus is if you don't know what it is and don't worry if you don't know what it is. Warren Buffett was in his late 30s before he created the modern-day Berkshire Hathaway. And if you do know what it is, use that time to pursue your focus intensely.