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No Focus, No Progress
Jacob Dyke
August 26, 2025
No Focus, No Progress
8:22 p.m. Laptop still open.
Dinner cold.
The to-do list longer than when you started.
You think: “If I just work harder, I’ll catch up.”
But more hours don’t fix overwhelm if what you’re working on doesn’t move your business forward.
Productivity at a high level isn’t about doing everything. It’s about focusing on your most important work long enough to get it done.
But how do we hold Intentional Focus when we are constantly distracted?
Distracted to Intentional Focus
Earlier this year I let my focus slide. I got sucked into a “good” idea that wasted 3 months of effort, $1,000, and left me stalled out.
Now looking back, I can clearly see how this new idea was moving me away from bringing my vision into reality. But in the moment, I was caught up in the excitement of the opportunity.
It was pausing to examine my work and realigning to my vision that got me unstuck and restarted my momentum.
Without my vision, I likely would have lost a lot more time and energy spinning my wheels towards nowhere.
But with my vision, I was able to recognize my error and get back on track.
My Vision helped me Prioritize the “Right Work” so that I could Focus on it.
Fight Against Distraction
With countless opportunities to choose from and notifications bombarding us, how do we begin to fight against Distraction?
What has helped me eliminate distractions the most is a simple equation.
Intentional Focus = Right Work + Right Environment.
Prioritize the right work. Do that work in the right environment.
Right Work makes the day simple. Right Environment makes the day doable.
Right Work
Finding your right work starts from knowing your Vision and Mission. You know where you are going and have decided on the path most likely to get you there.
To identify what to work on you can ask three questions:
What are the activities that bring your Vision closer to reality?
What are the bottlenecks preventing you from moving ahead?
What work, when completed, solves most of your problems?
Right Environment
You might know what you should work on but if you don’t have the environment around you that allows you to get that work done, you are just as stuck as if you didn’t know what to work on.
Right Environment is the space and time that makes the Right Work likely to happen. This means not being interrupted by constant notifications or urgent but less meaningful work.
How I set the Right Environment:
Silent Mode - Turn off notifications on my phone and no checking email.
Close Tabs - X out all Tabs on my computer other than the ones I’m working on.
Reduce Noise - No Netflix and often music in the background (Some people can work with music but often when I’m in deep thought, I need total silence.)
Yell at my lawn service to come back later - Not really but man they got me today.
My goal is to reduce the chances that something interrupts my focus time.
Implementing Right Work + Right Environment
Most of us cannot go dark the whole day. To make this manageable, I set aside 2 hours in the morning to solely focus on my highest priority. I don’t let meetings get scheduled then. Generally nothing will break during those 2 hours that I can’t handle after.
Having my most critical task completed early on means that, when interruptions happen later in the day, they’re less disruptive.
This gives me an achievable daily goal that allows me to tackle my most important work over longer stretches of time.
Resources for Right Work and Right Environment
Here are two additional resources that support identifying and implementing your Right Work and Right Environment.
God determines our steps
There’s an old saying, We make plans and God laughs.
In Proverbs 16: 9 from the New Living Translation it says.
“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”
We can design the greatest business plans and the perfect environments to do work in but without God it will all fall apart.
We can do nothing apart from him. Sometimes this can feel frustrating. All this effort and work into a project or business all collapses around you.
And yet I am reminded of how limited my strength and vision is compared to the creator of the universe.
He has designed us for a purpose prepared in advance for us to do.
Even when we don’t understand it, God is creating endurance, character, and ultimately hope through the hardship, suffering, and challenges we face.
This hope is found in the finished work of Jesus who paid a debt that we could not pay that we might be restored again with God.
So in all circumstances, we can praise God because he is in control and he has given us a greater hope in Jesus Christ.
I would love to hear from you
What is your highest priority this week?
What is the bottleneck that stops you from executing on it?
May you be Anchored in Christ
Jacob Dyke