Back to Basics

Steve Jobs said that he was most proud of what Apple chose not to do.  Jobs' uncanny ability to focus is what made Apple so remarkable and ridiculously successful.

When Jobs came back on board with Apple (he was fired for a time from his own company!), one of the first things he did was cut 70 percent of the number of products Apple was selling.  The company was producing and adapting products to meet the myriad of requests from their retailers...and they were losing money.  Jobs cut the number of products down to simply four items and BOOM - Apple's identity and profits started soaring.

Apple's success is not a result of doing more - rather, it's a result of doing the essential things really, really well.

It takes courage to realize that alot of the stuff we do is not important.  Sure it can seem urgent in the moment, but its impact in the long run (and on your bottom line) is pretty much non-existent.

Think about it.  Have you ever heard someone say, "Let's go to X Sandwich Place because they have 100 sandwiches to choose from."?  No, more likely you've heard (or said yourself), "This place makes the best bread.  Let's go there."

So what does this mean for YOU?  You're never going to have enough time to do everything you need to do (or think you need to do rather) every day.  But you always have enough time to do the most important things. The essential things.  What are those essential things for you?

See?  You don't need to be a superman at everything to achieve your goals.  You just need to muster up the courage to admit that most of what you are doing with your time and effort does not matter.  Then you can focus on mastering the few significant things that, when compounded over time, will really give you the results you want.

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