How Do You Know You Are Focusing on the Right Thing?

You wake up every day ready to hustle. You're grinding, putting in the hours, chasing your goals. But here's the big question: How do you know you're focusing on the right thing? Are you making real progress or just staying busy? You might be climbing the ladder of success as fast as you can. As Stephen Covey warned, if the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. Today, let's ensure your ladder is on the right wall. This topic actually comes from one of you, Maricel Padalaga, a member of our community, asked, how do you know you're focusing on the right thing? So, Marisol and everyone else who's wondering this, let's dive in and figure this out together in a practical, motivational, and science-backed way. And if you make it to the end of the video, put a hashtag #believe in the comments below and we might feature you somewhere here in a future video. Believe. Busy versus productive. Are you doing what matters? First, let's distinguish between being busy from being productive. It's easy to fill your day with tasks and feel like you're working hard. Emails, meetings, errands. You can do a lot and still accomplish little that truly matters. Management guru Guru Peter Drucker said it best: there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently what should not be done at all. In other words, being efficient on the wrong tasks is a waste. Focus is not about doing more things, it's about doing the right things. Think about it. Have you ever spent a whole day checking off a long to-do list, yet at night you wonder, did any of that really push me forward? Did it even matter? We've all been there. It's possible to be very busy without being effective. If you're climbing and grinding but not seeing results that matter, you might be focusing on the wrong thing. One sign is you feel overwhelmed and burned out but not accomplished. According to a Harvard study, between 25 and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed at work. You don't want to be incredibly busy but incredibly ineffective. So ask yourself honestly, am I busy for the sake of being busy, or am I getting closer to my big goal? Here's a pro tip for you. Before you put something on your calendar or your to-do list, pause and ask yourself, if I do this task all day, will I be closer to my goal at the end of the day? If not, it might not be the right thing to focus on. The power of focus. What the successful do. Let's talk about why focusing on the right thing is so crucial and how successful people attribute their success to focus. I spent years studying and interviewing top entrepreneurs and leaders for my Top 10 Rules of Success series. One thread I found, focus keeps coming up over and over as a key to success. In fact, there's a famous story where Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were at dinner and each asked to write down one word that led to their success. Both of them wrote focus. No discussion, no coordination, two of the richest, most successful people on the planet independently gave the same answer. That's how important focus is. And they're not alone. Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple, famously said, people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas there are. Jobs was as proud of the things Apple didn't do as the things they did. Why? Because he knew that innovation and success meant picking the right thing and saying no to distractions. When everything is a priority, nothing is. The right focus often means courageously eliminating even good options that aren't the best for you. Warren Buffett has a great approach to this as well. He once advised his personal pilot, Mike Flint, to list his top 25 career goals. Then Buffett told him to circle the top 5 and avoid the other 20 at all costs. Those 20 good but not great goals are the shiny objects that tempt us and diffuse our focus. Buffett's message was this: focus on your top 5 and ignore the rest until you succeed with those. It's about intentionally choosing what not to focus on so you free up energy for what truly matters. Here's another powerful example. Bruce Lee once said, I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Mastery comes from depth, not breadth. Whether you're learning a skill or building a business, focusing on one thing and doing it with intensity will beat scattering yourself across 10,000 different things. So the takeaway here is that the highest achievers credit focus as a major factor in their success. They pick the right the project, the skill, the goal that will have the biggest impact and then channel their efforts into it relentlessly. Now, how do you find your right thing? Let's talk about it. Find your why. Identify the right thing for you. Knowing you need to focus is one thing, but knowing what to focus on, that's the real crux of Marcel's question. How do you identify the right thing for you and your business or life? This is where you need to zoom out and look at the big picture of your purpose and goals. One approach that I swear by is outlined in my book, Built to Serve. In that book, I talk about the framework of who, why, and how to discover your purpose. So the who is identify who you are at your core, your single most important core value. This gives you a guiding star. The why is to understand why you do what you do. And here's a hint: your purpose comes from your pain. Think about the most painful challenge you've overcome in life. Often your mission, which is your why, is to help others overcome that same kind of pain. If you struggled with something and you found the solution, you'll likely feel passionate about sharing that solution or easing that pain for others. As Built to Serve explains, transforming your personal pain into a mission to help others gives you a purpose-driven focus. And then it's the how. Figure out how you will serve, the actions or business that allow you to live that purpose. So in my book, Built to Serve, I explain how finding your who, your core value, your why, your purpose from pain, and how, your vehicle to serve, gives you clarity on where to focus. When you align your work with your purpose, you know you're on the right path. If what you're working on connects to your deepest values and helps people, including yourself, in an area that truly matters to you, chances are you're focusing on the right thing. You'll feel it, a sense of meaning, even if it's hard work. As an entrepreneur or creator, The right thing to focus on is usually the thing that adds the most value to others and fulfills you. It's the intersection of what you're good at, what you love, and what makes an impact. So a quick exercise. Ask yourself, why is this goal important to me? 5 times. Keep drilling down. If you're building a business, why is it important? To make money. Why is making money important? To provide for my family and achieve freedom. Okay, why is freedom important? Because I want to create, I want to help others without constraints. Aha. So maybe helping others or creating is at the core. This method, similar to Toyota's 5 Whys technique, can reveal if the thing you're doing is connected to a strong why. If after a few whys you land on a reason that deeply resonates, you've likely found a worthy focus. If you struggle to find a good why, that might be a red flag that the thing isn't truly aligned with what matters to you. Also, think about your core values. One strategy I've shared in the past is to distill your values down to one core word. For me, that word is belief. It reminds me to focus on projects that inspire belief in myself and others. For you, maybe that word is service or creativity or freedom or something else. Use your one word as a filter. The right thing for you to focus on will align with the core value. If your word is service and you're spending most of your time on something that doesn't help anyone, you might be off track. If your word is innovation and you realize you haven't created anything new in months because you're bogged down in admin work, that's a sign to refocus. In short, to identify the right thing, get clear on who you are and what you want in the big picture. Set a clear direction. As the saying goes, begin with the end in mind. Once you have that, the next step is making sure your goals and priorities line up with that vision. Set clear goals and priorities. Having a clear goal is like having a target for your focus. Clarity is power. When you know exactly what you want, it's much easier to see which actions will get you there and which won't. According to decades of research by psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, setting specific goals can increase performance and productivity by 11 to 25%. That's a huge boost just from being clear about your target. Why? Because goals give you direction and help you prioritize. As one summary of their study put it, goals tell us exactly where we want to go. When we know where we're trying to go, we get there much more quickly. So step 1 is decide on a clear goal. What's the one thing that if you achieved it, would make the biggest positive difference in your life or business. It could be a revenue milestone, it could be launching your product, it could be mastering a certain skill, or even a personal goal like writing a book. Whatever it is, write it down. Make it specific, make it meaningful. This goal is now your North Star, the right thing that you want to be aiming at. Next, we wanna prioritize ruthlessly. Not everything on your plate contributes equally to your goal. This is where the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule comes in handy. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the causes. In practical terms, roughly 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results. So your job is to figure out what that 20% is for you, those vital few tasks that drive your goal forward, and focus on those while minimizing the rest. For example, if you're an entrepreneur, maybe 2 out of your 10 projects bring in the most of your revenue. Focus on those. If you're trying to get healthy, a few key habits like exercising daily, eating whole foods will give most of the benefits rather than obsessing over 20 different supplements and hacks. If you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description to go grab it. Let's start building real momentum in your life and business. I'll see you there. So how do you prioritize the right thing? Number 1, brainstorm your tasks and projects. List out all the major things you spend time on or you're planning on. Include ongoing tasks and new ideas that are swirling around in your head. Number 2, link each task to your main goal or your purpose. So for each item, ask, does this significantly help me achieve my main goal or fulfill my key purpose? Be brutally honest. If the connection is weak, mark that task as lower priority. And number 3, apply the 80/20 rule. Identify which tasks create the most of your desired outcomes, which tasks, when done well, drive the needle the furthest. Circle these. These are likely your right things. And then number 4, rank your priorities. Try Warren Buffett's approach. Pick your top 5 priorities that truly matter. Then commit to focus on those and avoid the others, no matter how tempting they are, until your top priorities are secure. It might hurt to put aside a cool project idea or say no to a decent opportunity, but remember Steve Jobs and say no to 100 other good ideas. Focus requires sacrifice. Number 5, schedule the important task. Take your number 1 priority task and block time for it first thing in the morning or as early as possible. This is sometimes called eating the frog, a concept from Brian Tracy, meaning you tackle your most important and usually toughest Task first thing when you have the most energy. If you schedule the most important thing first, you ensure that it gets done before distractions and lower-value tasks start to creep in. By setting clear goals and ordering your priorities, you create a roadmap for what the right thing is. It gives you a filter to decide when new tasks come up whether they deserve your focus or not. Learn to say no. Guard your focus. Once you know what your right thing is, your priorities and goals, the hardest part can be protecting that focus. Distractions will come. Other people's agendas will try to knock you off course. Unexpected opportunities, some good, some not so good, will appear. Here is where you must channel your inner Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett and exercise the power of no. Remember, every time you say yes to something unimportant, you're saying no to something important because your time and energy are finite. It's okay to decline meetings that don't serve your goals. To turn down clients who aren't the right fit for you, or to postpone a cool side project if it steals focus from your main thing. This is not easy. It takes confidence and it takes clarity, but it pays off big time. Steve Jobs' quote again is instructive: "Focus is about saying no to the 100 other good ideas out there." He understood that Apple couldn't chase every opportunity. They famously cut down their product lines to just a few key products that could really put their dent in the universe with. You can do the same on a personal scale. Figure out what activities, what commitments, what ideas are not contributing to your top 5 priorities and start gently but firmly eliminating or deferring them. Warren Buffett's avoid at all costs list of 20 things is a great visual reminder. Maybe literally make yourself a not-to-do list. Write down those tempting tasks or habits that you're not going to focus on right now so you don't forget and accidentally slip into them. Post it somewhere that is visible. Also, consider the people around you. Sometimes focusing on the right thing means setting boundaries with other people. If coworkers, friends, or even family are pulling you in a direction that conflicts with your main focus, you need to have some conversations. For example, if you're focusing on building your startup on weekends, you might have to say no to some social events. If you're focusing on writing a book, you might need to decline doing some extra freelance work that would eat up that writing time. It's tough, but true friends and supporters will understand when you explain why you're saying no. Remember your why from earlier. And here's a tip: try using a positive no. So for example, I'm honored you invited me to speak at that event, but I have to say no this time so I can concentrate on finishing my product launch this month. I want to give it my all. You acknowledge the request and give your reason. Which ties back to your important focus. Every yes and no shapes your future, so be intentional. As you practice saying no to distractions or lesser priorities, you'll find an empowering thing happens. You free up massive energy to pour into the things that truly matter. You'll make progress faster and with more peace of mind because you're not constantly torn in a million different directions. Single-tasking and deep work. Be present on the right thing. Now that you've identified the right thing and cleared some space for it, let's talk about how you focus when it's time to do the work. It's not just what you focus on, but how you manage your attention that determines your success. So in our modern world, distractions, they're everywhere. You've got your phone notifications, emails, social media. We have a multitasking culture, but study after study shows that multitasking is a myth. Trying to do several things at once usually means you do all of them poorly. And MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller explained that our our brains cannot focus on two things simultaneously. What we actually do is just switch rapidly between the tasks, and this task switching has a cognitive cost. You lose time and you make more errors when you juggle tasks, even if it feels like you're doing a lot. In fact, when you multitask, you can lose up to 40% of your productivity. Think about that. You could be almost half as productive trying to do two or three things at once compared to doing them all at a time. According to an infographic by the University of California, Irvine, it takes on average 23 minutes to refocus on a task after a distraction. Imagine how much focus time you lose if you keep checking your phone or bouncing between projects. So the habit to build is single tasking, or what author Cal Newport calls deep work. This means when you work on your right thing, you give it your full, undivided attention for a set period of time. You eliminate distractions proactively. Close your email, put your phone on do not disturb, maybe even disconnect from the internet if you can, unless you need it for the task. It can help to have a dedicated space or time where you do that one high-value task. Treat it as sacred focus time. There's a great Harvard study by psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert that found something interesting about focus and happiness. They discovered that people's minds wander 47% of the time on average. Nearly half our waking life, we're not fully present in what we're doing. And crucially, the study found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. When you're not present, when you're neither here nor there thinking of other things, you tend to feel less happy. Even if your mind wanders to pleasant thoughts, it doesn't make you happier than if you just engaged in the present task. In short, being fully present in whatever you're doing not only boosts your productivity, it boosts your happiness and fulfillment. So when it's time to work on that right thing, really work on it. If you catch your mind drifting or you get an impulse to check something, gently pull yourself back. It's like training a muscle, and over time, your focus muscle gets stronger. So try this: set a timer for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever suits you, and commit to focusing on one task for that duration. No breaks, no switching up. And after the time is up, take a 5-minute break, check whatever you need, then either continue or switch to the next important task for another focus block. This is akin to the Pomodoro Technique and can work wonders for you. You'll be amazed how much you can get done in a focused 30-minute burst on the right task versus a distracted 2 hours spread across the right task plus Instagram plus random emails. Also, eliminate multitasking in other ways. So if you're working on a big project, don't also have 15 browser tabs open unrelated to it. Don't try to have a deep strategy time while also monitoring your text messages. It's like trying to drive two cars at once. You end up crashing both. Finally, remember to be present, not just physically, but mentally. Sometimes we allocate time for the important thing, but then sabotage ourselves by worrying and overthinking. For example, you set aside time to develop your business strategy, which is the right thing, but the whole time your mind is anxiously thinking about an email you need to send or a minor issue. So to fight this, consider a quick brain dump before your focus session. Jot down any nagging to-dos or thoughts on a notepad to get them off your mind, then promise yourself you'll handle those after your focus block. Clear mind, clear focus. Being present also applies to personal life and rest. If you're resting, really rest. Don't beat yourself up about work during downtime. And if you're with family, then be with them. This trains your brain to focus on one thing at a time, which will help you when you turn to your work focus as well. Action steps. Let's put it all together. We've covered a lot of ground here, from mindset to purpose to practical prioritization to focus techniques. Now let's consolidate this into a simple action plan that you can start today to make sure you're focusing on the right thing. Number 1: Define your vision. Write down your main goal or purpose. Clarity is your starting point. What's the big win that you're after? Example: I want to grow my YouTube channels to 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year, empowering entrepreneurs. I want to launch my new app and get 10,000 users, or I want to improve my health and run a marathon. Make sure it's something that excites you and aligns with your values. Number 2, identify the high-impact activities. List all the activities that you do or plan to do related to that goal. Now circle the 20% that truly drive progress, the core value-add work. Be honest with yourself here. If you're unsure, look at past data or ask mentors what really moves the needle. Double down on these core activities. Number 3, eliminate or delegate the rest. Look at the remaining 80% of activities. What can you stop doing, delegate to someone else, or do later? Free yourself from the busywork trap. For example, if you're spending hours designing your website but your key skill is sales calls that bring in clients, consider hiring a part-time web designer. Saying no or delegating the lesser stuff is not a luxury. It's a necessity for greatness. Number 4, schedule your focus time. Take those high-impact tasks and block time on your calendar specifically for them. Treat these like important appointments with yourself. If mornings are when you have the most energy, schedule your most important task first. Remember the eat the frog scenario from Brian Tracy? Protect this time from interruptions. Number 5: Use focus tools and techniques during your focus blocks. Remove distractions, close any apps you have open, put your phone away, maybe play some concentration music if it helps you. Try techniques like the Pomodoro Technique we talked about—25 minutes focus, 5-minute break—if you struggle with staying on task. The goal is to train your brain to stay on one target at a time. Number 6: Review and adjust regularly. Every week, or at least once a month, step back and review. Am I getting results from what I'm working on? If not, ask why. Maybe you need to adjust your strategy. Focusing on the right thing is also about adaptability. You might find that what you thought was the right thing wasn't. And you need to pivot. That's okay. It's better to realize and adjust than keep grinding in the wrong direction. Use any feedback or data you get. So for example, if you spent a month focusing on a marketing channel and it's not yielding results, maybe the right thing to do is shift to a different marketing channel. Constant course correction is part of the journey. By following these steps, you create a cycle of continuous realignment with your right thing. It's like you're a ship at sea. You have a destination. You've mapped out the best route and you steer the ship daily and you course correct when the winds change. This way you know you're focusing on the right thing because you've thought it through and you're paying attention to the outcomes. Trust yourself and believe. At the end of the day, knowing if you're focusing on the right thing comes down to clarity and trust. Clarity in what you want and what matters and trust in yourself that you've made the best choice you can. Once you've done the work to identify your top priority, Commit to it fully. Don't second-guess yourself every hour. That only drains your energy. Instead, give it your all. Measure your progress over weeks and months, not minutes. Believe that the course you've set is the right one, and it will reveal itself through results and fulfillment. Remember Maricel's question. She's looking for that confidence that she's not wasting time on the wrong thing. The fact that you're even asking that question means that you're conscientious and self-aware. That is a great sign. It means you care about your direction and you're not willing to live life on autopilot. Use that as motivation to be deliberate with your focus. Most people never even ask if they're on the right thing. They just drift. But not you. You're taking charge of your focus and thus your destiny. In Built to Serve, I wrote that humans are built to serve and make a difference. When you find the path where you can contribute the most and feel the most alive, you found the right thing. Pour your heart into it. Will it be hard? Yes, there will be boring days, there will be doubters, there'll be moments you'll question yourself even. But when you are on the right thing, you'll also experience moments of flow, of deep satisfaction, of signs that you're making an impact. Cherish those and use them as the fuel to keep going. And if you do realize, hey, I've been climbing the wrong ladder, don't worry. It's never too late to reposition that ladder. Some of the most successful people, change focus after years in one area. The key is they recognized it and they took action. You can always refocus when you gain new insight. It's part of growth. To sum it up, focus on what matters most, your purpose, your top goals, the few key actions that create the biggest results. Say no to the rest, or at least not now. Work with intense focus in the moment, one thing at a time. Back your focus with belief, belief in your vision and in yourself. And as you do this, you will start seeing progress. You'll feel more in control, less chaotic. You'll wake up knowing, yes, I am on the right path, and that confidence will give you even more momentum. Success, impact, and fulfillment are all about consistent focus on what truly matters. You've got this. Now go out there, make those tough choices, zero in on your mission, and make it happen. And whenever you feel in doubt, remember why you started and believe. To learn the 5 common habits that can damage your confidence, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. You are accidentally destroying your own confidence without even knowing it. Sound dramatic? Maybe. But if you're like most entrepreneurs, you likely have a few daily habits that quietly chip away at your self-belief.