In any trade, activity, or endeavour in life, business, or career, it is important to build endurance, persistence, and resilience. Let me work with endurance…
Endurance can be defined as the ability to focus on the task at hand and bring it successfully to a conclusion, with minimal or no distractions. Distraction is a major cause of loss in corporate and personal destinies. Distraction is getting dis–attracted from what is supposed to be your focus or focus on. Distraction is a major destiny killer, just like procrastination.
Some call this endurance or fortitude; others call it strength or stamina. Have you heard people saying, “May God give them the fortitude to bear the loss?” Yeah, the one praying means may God give them the endurance to bear the loss to focus, not being distracted (dis-attracted).
No matter what you call it though, endurance is the ability to PERSEVERE and get the job done, no matter what.
No success story can be told without the testimony of perseverance. You may not know all the variables or factors of success, but one variable that must be on the list of success variables/factors is perseverance. Why? There can’t be a success without Focus… and focus can’t be maintained without Perseverance, yet the two are not the same.
Usually, when we speak of endurance, we’re referring to physical activity. People mostly substitute stamina for endurance here sometimes. Good and correct. Yet, endurance is as important in the leadership and corporate world as in sports, academics, and other endeavours. Endurance is critically important in the business world as it is anywhere else.
In the business sphere, endurance usually constrained you to focus. In place of physical prowess (stamina) in sports, it becomes in business the ability to concentrate successfully on a given task or line of trade/business.
Focus is a critically important skill for any business owner and leader to have, especially in today’s fast-‐paced world where success often means keeping several equally important balls in the air at one time. [You have heard people say, “Don’t keep your eggs in one basket”.] The big question is, “What is your egg? Is what you pursue, have, know, or do amount to your egg?” If so, you have another level of a problem! That makes that statement/phrase need to be properly situated in a context for it to be right contextually, otherwise, it’s wrong.
We all need to be multi-taskers, multi-purpose, multi-dimensional, multi-approach, etc. Quite already! But, how can/do we focus in the light of the admonition of being multi-this & that’?
Now, how do you focus on multitasking, a situation where, by its very definition, several things are happening at once simultaneously? Well, follow me intently!
The key to successful focus is ATTENTION.
When several things are happening simultaneously, you need to CONCENTRATE on only ONE thing at a time. Please get me: this doesn’t mean that you bring one task to full completion before you start on another. It means instead, you spend just enough time on a given task to take it to the next level or next stage of development and then you turn your attention to another task. In some sense, it’s a little like being a mother duck with ducklings. You give your attention to the duckling that is farthest out of line, nudging it forward to where it should be before you turn your attention to the next little duck. Each duckling gets a measure of your focus, but none gets your full attention all the time. In this way, each task gets moved along in turn, and all are completed in time.
Wow, let me leave you here.
Mike Ihezuo
Mike Ihezuo helps organizations and individuals to succeed. Reach him Ad Inquiry or https://mikeihezuospeaks.net. He’s on FB #LeadershipXcellence.
