Read 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done for Free Online

is presented to me (event), my instinct is to solve it (reaction). On the other hand, what I want most with my wife, Eleanor, is a strong vibrant relationship (outcome). So when she comes to me with a problem, instead of immediately trying to solve it, I ask her what she wants me to do. Listen? Solve? Coach? I am surprised, disappointed even, by the number of times she says, “Just listen.”
Wait
, I want to tell her,
I have ideas. Solutions! I can help.
But after more than ten years of marriage, I’ve realized that listening is sometimes all the help she wants from me. So I listen.
    In the end, I continued to work with Hunter and his company for several years. Instead of focusing on Hunter, I focused on the goal of creating a more functional, productive management process for the company.
    At one point, I was back in Hunter’s office, planning an offsite I was going to lead for him, when I saw my book on his bookshelf.
    “Have you read it?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he answered, “and it’s not bad.”
    You know
, I thought,
I might like this guy after all
.
    Not that it matters.
    Knowing what outcome you want will enable you to focus on what matters and escape the whirlwind of activity that too often leads nowhere fast.

Where We Are
    Slow down your momentum. Pause in the moment. Stop to reset. Look around—beyond what you expect things to be—to see things as they really are. Expand your view of yourself. Be open to your extraordinary potential. Focus on your outcome.
    These behaviors—steps really—will help you see yourself, and the world, plainly and distinctly. They’ll send you up in the air to see what’s below more clearly. They’ll help you cut through your—and other people’s—unhelpful biases, preconceptions, and dead-end ruts. They’ll help you experiment and tap deeply into resources you may have forgotten were there. And they’ll guide you to draw from your bottomless well of talent to achieve concrete things in the world.
    What particular things? What specific talent? That’s the focus of part 2 .

P ART T WO
What Is This Year About?
Find Your Focus
    I n the introduction to part 1 , I shared the first part of my story. How I built the company I had dreamed of creating and then, when it all crashed, I pressed the FIND ME button and hovered over my world, pausing and noticing. I experimented; I explored acting, medical school, rabbinical school, and investment management.
    And as I experimented, I began to descend back to earth, but in a slightly different location. Not a different country, but a different city. Or maybe just a different street in the same city.
    Here’s what I noticed: While ultimately, I didn’t want to be an actor, rabbi, doctor, or investment manager, there were things about each of those roles that were attractive to me. I wanted to be playful, express myself, and experiment. I wanted to be useful and help others in a hands-on way. I wanted to have, and express, meaning and depthin my work. I wanted to be inspired and to inspire others. And I wanted to make good money.
    I also noticed that I really liked—and wanted to continue—consulting. I loved the client partnerships and relationships I developed. I thoroughly enjoyed—and was good at—looking at problems and devising creative solutions to address them. I had a passion for ideas of all sorts, and it made me happy to use them to help people make changes in their companies and in their lives. I loved thinking and writing and speaking in ways that inspired others.
    What I didn’t like was running a consulting company, which to me often felt like the opposite of consulting. Instead of inventing innovative customized solutions to a particular problem, I had to create standardized methods that I could replicate across all my consultants around the world. Instead of spending my time with clients, I was spending my time managing other consultants. Instead of thinking up new ideas or writing or speaking, I was spending