Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done

Published on the Deaf Auntie website on August 2nd 2013, a website by Laraine Callow.

In Focus, Jurgen Wolff offers solutions to different problems that people have focusing on their goals and doing the tasks to achieve those goals. He walks through the process – identifying your goals in work, life, career and health – and gives us ways to tackle common obstacles, such as procrastination, deadlines for multiple projects, and work-life balance.

Jurgen Wolff is a writer, lecturer and consultant. With Focus, he walks people through conception of their dreams and goals, how to break them down into manageable chunks, and how to deal with the various issues that arise; from why and how we procrastinate, how to cope with tasks that take too much time and offer little reward, to how to network in a way that works for you. 

Focus begins with a discussion of the 80/20 rule, that 20% of your time or efforts contribute to 80% value, whilst in any given day, 20% of our actual time is focused on things that give us real value and 80% of our time is spent on things of low-value. Jurgen suggests that we can change this by focusing on those 20% tasks that give us real positive outcomes, and spend less time on those low-value 80% tasks which take people’s energy and time away from the things that make most difference.

Following this 80/20 idea, he looks at how we can define our goals and dreams, and how to break these down into manageable and achievable tasks. Specifically, he focuses on those people who find it difficult to break things down, such as right brain people who may have a more unplanned approach to everyday tasks. 

He offers creative solutions, such as thinking of the journey towards reaching your goal as a ‘hero’s journey’, with different obstacles and tasks to complete. He also advocates for creating different personas that you can use when you want to tackle tasks that you find difficult, such as Miss Moneypenny (rational, efficient, conservative), or Big Kid (playful, adventurous, open-minded).

The book also offers solutions for dealing with information overload, procrastination, and how to cope with deadlines for multiple projects. For example, in the case of information overload, there are strategies such as changing your environment, how to focus on useful information and working out how connected you really need to be to focus on your goals.

Focus is useful and practical, and if you follow the exercises in the book, will help you to identify your goals and will give you the tools for managing issues that may arise.