This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I love watching business podcasts like “My First Million” or “Lenny’s Podcast”… and almost everyone that is interviewed says how important it is to focus.
And so that was the mantra that I had in the back of my head for years. That is at least.. up until a couple years ago when I started getting good at this system I use.
Now I almost say… “F#ck Focus” hahaha
But not exactly…. rather I have a different definition of focus. One that is far wider than the one that I used to have and wider than the one that I think most folks have.
Rather I view what I do as just lots of discrete tasks. Almost like self-contained units that travel along a predetermined route towards completion.
And it is my job to get each one to their destination on time and with quality.
So as long as I can continue to do that…. I can continue to maintain a fairly wide focus.
Now let’s dive in.
Projects today are almost always cross-functional
When you work on something like a project… what happens?
It is very rare that you can just sit down for hours and hours until you finish the project. That is just not how it works these days.
Projects in today’s day and age are almost always cross-functional. You’re relying on others to get their work done so that you can continue to progress.
It’s like a band… if you’re the guitarist and you’re focused on being the best that ever lived… well then it doesn’t matter how hard you try if your singer and drummer suck. As a band you guys are still gonna suck.
Now say you’re building a website and you are the overall project owner… than you also need to have designers, developers, copywriters, etc.
You cannot just sit down at your desk and put the whole website up by yourself.
And so if you were to say to yourself… “I’m going to fully focus on this” it would not really benefit you much. Because there is little that you, yourself, can do.
And so rather you work in small increments at various points in time to review tasks and give new ones. Or resolving issues that arise.
For these reason I like to say that today we all do “lots of discrete interconnected tasks.”
Lots of discrete, interconnected tasks
It is quite rare that I ever have to spend more than 45 minutes doing any specific task myself these days. Why?
Well…
- people hate long emails and documents. They don’t have the attention for it.
- making long presentations or reports are in my view pretty much useless
- we have AI to do the first draft of many things we do
- and so on…
And so if I were to look back at my working week this past week and ask myself… “When did I sit down and work for 45+ minutes on any single task?”
The answer in my case would be almost never.
Rather I spent long periods of time reading through clickup task updates and responding to them. But I count each of those as separate discrete tasks.
And they related to various projects, which have different stakeholders.
Focus is highly overrated in this type of situation
Think about it… if i’ve done all that I can do on the new website project that I mentioned above, than what good is it to stay focused on it?
I pretty much just need to wait till others finish their tasks. And I am blocked from proceeding further on the things I need to do on it.
Here is where I believe there is a fork in the road in how people should handle this:
Type 1: People who have poor systems
These folks should just stay focused on this project even if it means lots of idle time.
The reason for this is that if they instead shift focus to something else.. than when others finish their tasks on the website, it is highly likely that they will then become the bottleneck and slow down the entire project.
Why? Because they don’t have a good system for checking in on the website project and ensuring that it is continuing to run smoothly.
Type 2: People who have solid systems (of which I count myself one)
When you have good systems you are notified right away when others working on the website have finished their tasks. And so you review and unblock them in a timely way.
As a result you can potentially do many other things at the same time.
In fact you can do ‘as many things as you want’ until you are becoming the bottleneck. And this is exactly how I define my own level of focus.
I do not want to ever be the bottleneck in the projects I am on. Rather I want to be the one who is consistently lightning fast in getting his own tasks done and in responding to others.
Operating with a wide focus
I’ve been operating like this for several years now and can say honestly that I absolutely love it. I do various things at the same time… but ensure that I do not become the bottleneck.
And I do it through my ‘everything is a task’ method in which literally anything that I do on any project i’m involved in is represented by a Clickup task.
Each task I’m assigned to has a due date and I make sure it gets done on time. In part because I get a notification each time anything comes due that I did not finish.
I’m also following all tasks that are assigned to others but I need to monitor… and this ensures that I am unblocking and steering in a timely manner. As long as I keep my notification inbox clean I consider that i’m ‘on top of it’.
So by doing this… i juggle a variety of things. For example:
- I run a lead gen agency with a number of clients and oversee cold email campaigns, paid ad campaigns as well as teams that make cold calls.
- I am fractional COO at a venture-funded startup where I oversee numerous things.
- With a venture builder I’m helping create a D2C eCommerce brand, helping a funded startup with its pivot, and supporting the launch of a new offshoring agency.
- I run Techzi, a tech news media site, that puts out ~10 articles and a daily news video + newsletter everyday.
And I do this shit all at the same time. While still going home on time everyday and hanging out with my son and wife.
To operate with a wide focus, you need to be systematic
If you were to ask anyone involved in any of these activities I mentioned above… I think they would honestly say that I am not the bottleneck. Rather I am generally on top of my shit and driving/reminding others to stay on top of their’s.
Could some of these things perhaps do a bit better if I focused more on them? Probably.
But do I think that that extra focus/effort would be the difference between them succeeding or failing?
Absolutely not. In my experience there are lots of other externalities that end up being crucial. Things that you cannot predict at the beginning.
Now does this mean I will always operate with such a wide focus? No.. eventually I will choose a winner(s) and buckle down and focus.
Because as the winner or winners scale.. it will diversify and explode in terms of its needs on my time and focus.
Starting wide has allowed me to weed out the winners
As i’ve explained above.. being able to juggle a number of things allows me to try more stuff.
In the past year or so i’ve dabbled with a number of other things & folks that did not make the list above. I’ve already filtered them out.
But why did I stop doing them? Was it that I was the bottleneck and just couldn’t keep up?
No. I would deem that I was always able to handle my responsibilities and was often the driver. Rather it was that other variables fell thru.
Perhaps a potential partner was unreliable or they changed their mind about their interest level. Or they just have a very different operating model (I set my filter on people being very organized like myself as I hate constantly chasing).
Or perhaps when we dug into the opportunity it turned out to be much harder than we thought and required more funding than we had.
In my experience there can be many reasons…. but you learn quickly to just move on. Because there are other opportunities that are more attractive with a better set of conditions for success.
ie. I do not get overly ‘vested’ until I see that it is working.
Closing thoughts
As I’ve explained above.. when you start wide and then narrow down it allows you to compare and contrast different opportunities, different partners, etc.
And choose the ones that you think have the best chance of being the winners.
Or choosing the people that you enjoy working the most with.
For me this has been one of the biggest learnings in life. I’ve gone into a couple of jobs ‘blind’ in the past.
And ended up in situations I did not enjoy (eg. my manager, etc), but was already very committed.
I know of many people that are in this situation now… working in companies where they either don’t like their manager or what they do. But they feel ‘stuck’.
I do not do that anymore.
I choose what and with who I want to work with. And as a result, I honestly LOVE working and work A LOT.
But the enabler to it all was…. being systematic enough to go wide and then narrow down. Something that I cannot recommend enough to the young folks out there.
