What is the most important skill for a successful and happy life? There is an old story of a reporter who went up to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett at an event. The reporter asked each of them to write down one word that they believe to be the most important key to success. As the story goes, without consulting each other, the two billionaires wrote down the same word! So what was the most important key to success, according to them?

Focus.

Your ability to become laser-focused on one big long-term goal and persist until you achieve that goal is the most important skill that you can develop. It’s obvious if you think about it. The most successful people in the world are usually one of the best in their field, if not the best. Warren Buffett was and still is one of the best at investing. Bill Gates was one of the best at building a successful software business.

To become one of the best, you have to become absolutely obsessed with what you do. People forget about how much short-term gratification Warren Buffett sacrificed so that he could invest most of his income and see it grow over decades. That’s dedication to investing! People forget that Bill Gates was writing code since he was 13 so that by age 24 he was a master and could build a successful software company. Gates was so obsessed that he would write code until he passed out on his keyboard from exhaustion, only to wake up later and continue coding. That’s dedication to software!

In this guide, I’m going to teach you the difference between micro-focus and macro-focus, why having macro-focus is important, and how you can develop incredible amounts of macro-focus for yourself.

Micro-Focus vs. Macro-Focus

What does it mean to focus?

Focus can be a generic term, so let me break it down for you. Micro-focus, otherwise known as concentration, is the act of disciplining yourself to work diligently on a single task until it is done. To improve your micro-focus, you can read my guide on how to improve concentration for success. In that guide, you’ll learn how to eliminate distractions, practice mindfulness, and measure your focus time.

Since I’ve already covered micro-focus in that guide, I’m not going to cover it in depth here. I’m just bringing it up to point out the fact that this guide is not about concentration, but decision-making.

Macro-focus is the practice of aligning most of your decisions and actions in life with your long-term goals. It’s about having a long-time perspective on your life and the things you need to do to achieve what you want to achieve. The ability to lock-on to and pursue one big long-term goal and to work for months, years, or even decades to achieve that goal is macro-focus mastery.

Macro-focus is the combination of patience, resilience, discipline, and belief. You can think of micro-focus as short-term and macro-focus as long-term. While micro-focus is important for success, macro-focus is the critical skill for long-term success. Let me explain why.

Why Macro-Focus is Important

While micro-focus allows us to get more work done in less time, it’s all for naught if we don’t direct our micro-focus towards the right things. The truth is, you can be the most efficient person on Earth, but if you aren’t working on the right things then you won’t be effective.

You may be wondering, who’s to say what the “right things” are? That’s the point. Macro-focus is the skill that helps you identify what the “right things” are for you. Macro-focus is the most important skill because it keeps you on track to be most effective in the long-run.

In today’s information age, more time spent working doesn’t necessarily mean more results. That’s why it’s important to not only to work hard, but also to take the time to deeply consider and decide what things to work hard on. You can spend 12 hours per day working, but if you’re working on things that don’t add value to society or to your life, those hours will ultimately be wasted. This is the root idea behind the expression, “work smart, don’t work hard”.

Sometimes, it’s even possible to work hard in one area for many years and achieve contemporary results, only to regret the time spent working anyway. We’ve all heard stories of successful people who ended up miserable because they didn’t feel that their work had any meaning when it was all said and done. To me, that’s an even scarier horror story than the person who worked diligently towards something that they believed in and loved deeply, yet failed.

How to Develop Incredible Macro-Focus

To develop incredible macro-focus, you must stay laser-focused on one to three long-term goals until they are accomplished. What constitutes a long-term goal, and how can we use our goals to develop macro-focus?

Visualization of Your Goals

A long-term goal starts with a clear and positive vision for your future.

For example, if your long-term goal is to start a successful upscale restaurant, you need to visualize the end-result of that goal. You may imagine a beautiful building with new furniture and ambient lighting inside, or your patrons enjoying a meal and complimenting the service and atmosphere. You should imagine how your life will be, in detail, once the restaurant becomes successful.

Will you wear nicer clothes, drive a nicer car, enjoy new experience and benefits, and have more time to spend with your family? Keep in mind that this is just an example. What you visualize will depend on you and your values, as well as what you want out of life.

The important idea is to visualize how your goal will impact your life in a positive way if it were to be achieved. This practice of visualization will help you draw out extra motivation during the toughest times and roughest parts of your journey. Writing and reviewing your long-term goals down on paper each day can also help reinforce this visualization process.

Making Progress Every Day

Once you’ve visualized your long-term goals and written them down on paper, it’s time to make progress. It helps to break long-term goals into medium-term and short-term goals to help keep you macro-focused. The key here is to spend more of your time working on your goals and less of your time doing everything else in life.

Instead of watching 2 hours of television or YouTube each day, work towards your goals for 2 hours. These little sacrifices seem small and insignificant, but they add up over time! As it is said in an old Chinese proverb, “a journey of 1000 leagues starts with a single step”.

If you don’t take single steps each day, you won’t make progress towards your goals. Macro-focus is all about keeping yourself accountable almost every single day to make progress. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself with this. You don’t need to make 1 year’s worth of progress in a single day.

Remember, it doesn’t hurt to make progress slowly, it only hurts to stand still.

Ignoring the Noise

This last insight is critical for developing macro-focus. As you make progress towards your goals, inevitably you’ll begin to attract naysayers and negative people. People will tell you that you’re too young, too old, too inexperienced, overqualified, under-prepared, or overconfident.

You’ll also encounter time-sucks and energy-vampires that take you away from your most important goals. These time-sucks could include the latest television shows, daily outings to bars and clubs, or even chatting with co-workers in the office.

All of the people, activities, and distractions that constantly take you away from your most important goals are called noise. Of course, it’s okay to relax, watch a TV show or two, and go out with friends every so often. We’re human beings after all, and life is not all about work and success!

However, you must be aware of the potential consequences each time you engage in an activity that is not moving you towards your goals. In general, you should spend more of your time working towards your goals and less time on the other things in life that are not important to you.

Furthermore, you shouldn’t allow negative people stop you or get in your way. There are a lot of people out there who, unconsciously or otherwise, want to pull others down because they feel insecure about their own progress in life. Ignore the noise and keep going so that you can develop your macro-focus and achieve what you really want out of life!

Conclusion

I hope this guide effectively taught you the most important skill for success. Remember, both micro-focus and macro-focus are critical for success. With extreme focus, you can accomplish much more than the average person.

You’ll also master your profession faster than your competitors and produce more results. As you produce more results because of your focus, you’ll begin to attract exponential rewards into your life!

Did you like this guide? I would love to hear what you think about the most important skill, macro-focus. Please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.

Karim Elsheikh
Founder of InnerConqueror

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Originally published at www.innerconqueror.com on October 25, 2017.