Quotes about Focus

Consider: What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time?

He who has a 'why' can live with any 'what.

All of us are interested in things outside of our stewardships, and we should be, but the most important way to do anything about them is to magnify our own stewardships. When you focus on your own responsibility, you become relatively unconcerned with other peoples stewardships...The highest form of influence is to be a model, not a critic; a light, not a judge.

But you have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say "no" to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger "yes" burning inside. The enemy of the "best" is often the "good.

Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is comparatively small.

It is only in orienting his life to the divine center that a person can secure anything else he desires and yet not be based upon it.

They suggest that the essence of principled negotiation is to separate the person from the problem, to focus on interests and not on positions, to invent options for mutual gain, and to insist on objective criteria—some external standard or principle that both parties can buy into.

"Begin with the end in mind" is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined.

The key is to not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

So we worked on visualising relaxation in the middle of the big pressure circumstance. We discovered that the nature of the visualisation is very important. If you visualise the wrong thing, you'll produce the wrong thing.

Do what is important rather than what is urgent.

You might work on your behavior—you could try harder, be more diligent, double your speed. But your efforts would only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster.