Power of Focus

“Diversification is Protection Against Ignorance”…Warren Buffett

It has been a year since Steve Jobs died. As I was reading through several articles on the first anniversary one message stood out…Focus and Simplicity. Jobs’ success is owed due to these two main qualities. We can all see the effect of “Simplicity” in the Apple designs…but  what about Focus?

               According to Jobs, “Focus is about saying No”. Successful people are Focussed…be it Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs or Gandhi. We face multitude of options in our daily life. However, in order to use our limited resources effectively, we would have to pick and choose. Let us take the example of investments . The traditional way of thinking is to diversify and spread the money in different instruments such as fixed deposits, Gold ,Real estate or the Equities…While this may reduce the risk,  you would barely get an average return at a given point, because one of the investments may be pulling down heavily on the others.

The argument that many of us have against Focus approach  is “what if I focus on one thing and it is going to bomb”. Yes…I agree that there is a definite risk element. The solution lies though in knowing enough what we plan to do and to just do it. So you have some money and want to know if an investment in Real estate would be worth.I would recommend a bit of research around the topic such as:

1)      Which locality?...Current city…Home Town?

2)      What type of property…Land or apartment?

3)      How long can you wait to see the returns?...etc.,

If you don’t feel comfortable with the answers that you get from your research ,you say No and move to another investment that you would feel comfortable with.

While I have used Investment as an example, it applies to any activity that needs our Time and or Money. So Focus…Do enough research about something you want to do. Trust your instincts to decide if you want to do it. And then Plunge into it… by putting most of the resources into it.