“The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.”
- Mary Pickford

Entering into the final month of the calendar year, it’s not unusual to start anticipating what lies ahead. As businesses are creating and approving budgets, scurrying to finish up projects that need to be done before the end of the year and forecasting the sought-after growth within an industry, we, too, should look ahead personally and work toward our own betterment.

Focus is a key component to achieving what we’re after and usually our first mistake is picking too many things in which to go after. For example, if we’re looking to “be healthier,” but interpret that as immediately going on a diet, going to the gym AND eliminating a particular bad habit, then we are already setting ourselves up to fail. It’s difficult to accomplish many things at once, so it’s better to choose ONE thing as a whole (such as “be healthier”) and work on ONE aspect of that goal at a time. We can start off first by kicking that bad habit. Once we’ve mastered that, then we start a diet. Once we’ve kicked the bad habit and changed our eating style, then we can start going to the gym.

This method helps break down a larger goal into smaller ones, which creates more achievable milestones that help keep us motivated to continue on to the next one. Even if we only manage to kick the bad habit, or only manage to eat healthier, or only manage to establish a gym routine, we can at least feel like we’re a little bit healthier even though we didn’t achieve all that we intended. Without this method, it’s very common to try and do it all at the same time, fail, then give up on the entire effort completely.

This past year in our business, we were focussed on Efficiencies. And although we’ve been in business for more than a decade and operate pretty efficiently, it had never been a “focus” until this year. What we accomplished was pretty amazing. By implementing more systems internally and for our clients, slashing our development time by more than half and changing the way we approach certain projects, we’ve been able to take on much more work with much less resources, setting ourselves up for a great growth year in 2014.

Next year our focus will be on Communication - with our staff, with our clients and with our prospects. Communication may seem like an obvious part of business that happens inevitably, but until it becomes a focus there is likely much more we can do to improve. Through communication we can develop a stronger culture, a more loyal customer base and an even strong brand.

Here's the Point:
Choose ONE thing in your personal life and ONE thing in your professional life in which to focus your efforts. Set small milestones to help you achieve that ONE thing and your chance at success will skyrocket.