How To Develop Steve Jobs Like Focus
“Steve was the most remarkably focused person I have ever met in my life”
-Jony Ive (former Chief Design Officer at Apple)
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. They let go of 3,000 employees and were said to be 90 days away from closing.
When you think about Apple today, this story is hard to believe. With Steve Job’s leadership, Apple quickly turned the ship around, guiding the company to its current renaissance.
While he brought many skills to the table, his ability to focus was critical in the company’s comeback story.
Unable to explain why so many products were necessary, Jobs asked his team of top managers, “Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?” When he didn’t get a simple answer, Jobs got to work reducing the number of Apple products by 70 percent.
learning to focus is something I’ve consciously practiced. I was diagnosed with ADD (ADHD) when I was a kid. Being aware of this, I’ve worked hard to improve my mental attention. Using daily planning techniques, meditation and studying high achievers like Steve Jobs has provided useful insight on how to improve my focus.
While the word focus is frequently thrown around, developing focus isn’t a skill often taught. Fortunately, the three traits that powered Steve Jobs’ superpower like focus are learnable with conscious effort.
Close Your Eyes While You Eat
While Apple is well known for their beautiful phones and computers, Steve Jobs also wanted to be proud of how Apple products looked inside. That’s called attention to detail!
In an age with overwhelming distractions, noticing details is often lost. One easy and practical way to practice this skill is to chew with your eyes closed. By chewing with our eyes closed, we can notice very subtle details about the food we’re eating and we learn to keep our mind’s attention purely on one thing — the act of eating.
How To Develop
Once you take a bite of food, close your eyes and keep your full mental attention on the food you’re eating. To the taste and texture you get from each bite. Try not to think about anything besides the food you’re eating. This may be challenging at first.
By doing this each day for a few weeks you’ll notice your attention to detail improving not only for the food you’re eating but also in other parts of your life.
If you’re into meditation, Anapana meditation is also a powerful way to develop this skill by focusing on the sensation of the breath.
It’s Not About “No” It’s About “Why”
People often attribute Steve Jobs great focus to being able to say no, but that isn’t exactly correct. Yes, he is famous for saying no to many ideas and projects, but the reason he could say no with such confidence and clarity was because he was clear on Apple’s mission. Put in another way, he understood why Apple existed.
With this knowledge, Steve and the Apple team quickly determined what products the company should focus on and what projects didn’t align with their why. And they did just that. Within a year of returning to Apple, Steve and Jony Ive designed and released the original iMac. The launch of this iMac kicked off Apple’s return and sparked life back into the business.
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
“The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”
How To Develop
Steve Jobs often said if you want to be great at something, it’s essential to do what you love. So to determine your own “why” or mission begins by exploring your passions.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you need to create some big company like Apple. It could be gardening, designing, operations, helping others, or something else — but start by developing your passions further during the nights and weekends.
Once you have your why it’s easy to decide what you should focus on and what you can ignore. But without a why, it’s like you’re on a boat out to sea with no destination, merely going wherever the wind blows. Put in more practical terms, doing whatever “feels right” in the moment.
Be The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones most recent album came out 2016. That’s over 50 years of music! To create anything for so long, especially when you have already enjoyed your share of success, requires passion and determination.
Steve Jobs exuded a similar style of determination. After leaving Apple, he could have easily hung up his hat and enjoyed retirement. Instead, within the same year Steve left Apple, he started his new company NeXT. And the year after, he payed millions to purchased the animation movie studio Pixar. Both finding commercial success after many years of development.
How To Develop
This kind of sustained focus or determination isn’t easy. It requires humility, the ability to face failure, and a readiness to try again.
Go do that “thing” you have been worried about failing at. Create that idea you have been dreaming of and share it with the world. Make that short movie you have been thinking about and upload it to YouTube. Organize that charity event you have been imagining and raise some money.
Don’t worry about the results, just do it. If it fails, no problem. Dust yourself off and try again. With the right attitude, failure can only make you tougher and wiser.
Final Thoughts
Over the last nine years since Steve Jobs passing, Apple has become not just another tech company, it is the largest company in the world and one of the most beloved brands. It is hard to imagine this turn around story without Steve Jobs’ influence.
Steve’s focus allowed the entire company to get behind a single mission, build amazing products, and continue to seek new heights even now.
Fortunately, with practice anyone can learn to develop his powerful focus. While I still get distracted by notifications, emails, and other life events, my focus has drastically improved with continued practice, helping me tackle various things I approach.
That’s the great thing about focus; we can apply it to anything we touch in our work or personal life — cooking, coding, learning, reading, repairing, managing, and so much more. And while it is not a skill you can list on your resume, the results of focus are.
They are certainly reflected in Steve’s resume!
“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
— Steve Jobs
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