048 | The Power of Focus

Our society is big on multitasking.

But when we try to do multiple things at once, we’re not able to do any of them in the best way. This includes our money goals.

In this episode, we talk about why focus is the best way to make progress on any particular goal.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

 Topics Discussed

• why focus is the best way to make progress on any particular goal
• examples of how we often approach our money goals versus approaching our goals with focus

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Episode 25: The Fastest Way to Pay Off Those Law School Loans

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back to the wealthy ask how are you. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you’re having an amazing day so far. Before we jump in, I want to share, I am reading, we should all be millionaires by Rachael Rogers, and I have to say it is an amazing book. It’s all about economic empowerment for women. So to all my ladies out there if you haven’t picked up this book yet if you hadn’t heard of it, I highly encourage you to go get it. I am thoroughly enjoying it. So today I want to talk about the power of focus. Now you know I like to get into definitions and so I looked up the definition of focus and Merriam Webster defines focus as to concentrate, attention, or effort. And when we think about a substance that’s concentrated. It’s like the most potent form of the substance right, it’s something that’s not diluted. And so what if we brought the most potent form of our attention or effort to our tasks or to our goals, like how much more progress, would we make, often in society, we try to multitask, to get multiple things done at once, and lawyers for some reason think we’re really good at this, but we’re really not. So we’ll be on a call, while also listening to a CLE and drafting a brief while eating lunch, trying to do all these things and not doing any of them like that great not being very efficient at it. And you know when you do that you don’t give your attention to any one thing, for real, like your brain is literally switching back and forth between tasks and so none of them is being done in the best way. And a lot of people do this same thing with money. So for example, people will tell me that they’re working on paying off debt, and they pay a couple $100 Extra on all of their debts or the two highest interest ones each month. And the problem is they’re not making the kind of progress they could be making if they instead focused on one at a time. So they’re basically multitasking, with their debt, right, they’re juggling all the different debts and switching back and forth between them and not handling any of them effectively. So if we look at actual numbers like put actual numbers to this. Let’s say you have four different loans with balances of $1,000 $2,000 $3,000 $4,000, and after the minimum payments, and all your other expenses each month you have $1,000 extra that you can put toward paying off your loans. What a lot of people will do is divide that $1,000 across all four loans. So they’ll pay an extra $250 on each loan, each month. Or maybe you know two of them have higher interest rates than the other so then they’ll split that 1000 extra dollars across those two. This is not focus. This approach significantly decreases the amount of progress you’re able to make and it drags out the amount of time it will take you to pay off your debt. This happens across different financial goals too, so like using the same $1,000 that’s left over in the example we just talked about. Some people will put $250 in an emergency fund, and $250 toward debt, and $250 in investments and $250 toward you know I don’t know whatever other goal, and again it’s not focus. It’s not like it’s going to make your achievement of any one of your goals, take way longer. When you spread your effort across so many things, when you split your focus in the way we were just talking about, right you don’t make progress on anything as quickly as you could. You’re not giving the most potent attention to your goal. If you want to make progress. If you want to make the most progress in the most efficient way. Then you focus on one goal. One of my favorite explanations of this comes from the book Essentialism, which I have talked about many times before, but the book is by Greg McKeown, and he said something to the effect of most people make 4% progress on 10 different things, rather than 40% progress on the one thing that really matters 4% progress on 10 different things, or 40% progress on the one thing that really matters. A lot of people are doing this with their money. Right, we’re focusing on so many different things, so many different goals and juggling them all and not making much progress. When we could choose the one goal, that really matters. The goal that’s most important to us, and focus our efforts there. So going back to our example where you have $1,000 left over after all your expenses each month. Let’s say you want to build your emergency fund to $10,000 and you’ve already got, you know 5000 in there. And let’s say you want to pay off 30,000 in debt. You can take the extra $1,000 focus and put it in your emergency fund for five months and then hit your goal there, and then start putting that extra toward one day at a time. So it’s like the Debt Snowball Method, it’s not like it is the debt snowball method that I mentioned back in episode 25 you’re paying your debts from smallest balance to largest balance and I broke down in that episode how and why this method works. You don’t have to necessarily do the Debt Snowball Method, you could choose a different method, some people like to do, highest interest rate to lowest interest rate, but whatever method you choose, the point is to focus on one debt at a time. And this isn’t to say that you have to only take action on this one goal to the complete exclusion of everything else. Like I’ve mentioned before in my own life. My husband and I are currently focused on paying off our debt, but we still invest about 3% in our retirement accounts for example, but as you do this right as you focus on one goal at a time, and you make progress faster on your goals, you’re going to build your belief in yourself and your ability to hit your goals, because you’re going to have all this evidence of you actually hitting your goals. And so that’s going to motivate you to keep going. That belief in yourself is everything. And so the moral of the story is stop deluding all your efforts by trying to tackle too many things at once. Choose the goal that’s most important to you. Focus on that one goal, until you hit it, and then move to the next important one and the next one and the next one after that. And if you need help identifying which goal to go for first, or if you need help coming up with a plan of attack for your goals, reach out to me, let’s set up a call, you can head to rho Thomas comm slash coaching, and we can chat about how I can help. Okay, so I hope I drilled the word focus into your head enough today. If you’re currently doing all the things with your money. Stop. Pick one, focus on it, and then watch how much progress you make. Alright so that’s it for today’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram and my handle there is at I am rho Thomas. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Please subscribe to the show if you haven’t already so you’ll get new episodes as they’re released. And also take a second to leave a review which helps more people find the show, share this episode with a friend, or several who you think would enjoy it. And if you post on social media, don’t forget to tag me at I am rho Thomas on Instagram or rho Thomas on LinkedIn. Okay, friend, as we close out, I pray that you see the power of focus, as you strive to reach your goals. I pray that you will take some time to consider which of your goals is most important to you and intentionally make progress toward achieving it. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice, you deserve. Talk to you later.