In the book Work in Progress, Michael Eisner tells the story of a reporter interviewing Babe Ruth prior to the seventh game of the world series. The reporter asked how Ruth managed to bear the pressure with 50,000 fans in the stadium screaming every time he came to bat and his whole team counting on him. “Well,” Ruth replied coolly, “I just plan to keep my eye on the ball.” Eisner states, “I have learned to screen out everything but the task at hand. Divided attention is the surest route to mediocrity.”
Wow. What a great statement. How many of us become distracted from the task at hand and forget that in order for us to be effective, we must remember that the main thing is for us to keep the main thing the main thing! Even in this world of necessary multi-tasking, we should take Eisner’s and Babe Ruth’s advice to stay focused on whatever is most important at any particular time. Stephen Covey refers to this as “staying in quadrant II” (First Things First), so that we don’t waste our valuable resource of time by being controlled by crisis management, interruptions, and many seemingly innocent activities that actually harm our efficiency and keep us from our potential.
Certainly it is important to be able to manage multiple projects or people simultaneously. It is rare that a leader has the luxury of working on one task at a time. However, the quality of our work will be directly affected by the level of our focus and our ability to switch our full attention quickly from one thing to another, giving each task our 100% concentration at any certain moment. In my professional life, I have many irons in the fire, so to speak, and I place a great deal of importance on doing everything I do with excellence and enthusiasm, but I have to be mentally disciplined in order to finish thinking or working on one project fully before I begin another, or another, or another! Sometimes tasks are interrelated, but often the tasks are very different, and if I didn’t let go of one before going on to the next, both would suffer and I might very well fall into what Eisner stated…mediocrity. Let’s all take the advice of the Babe…keep your eye on the ball.
Lead well.