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PRINCIPLES
OF GREATNESS:
FOCUS:
Making the MAIN THING, the MAIN THING
By
Destin
In Steven
Covey’s book the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective
People’, we discover the principle of putting
‘First Things First’. In essence this principle
states that we must find the most important things in
our lives and make them the main focus of our
activities. Steven calls the most important things our
True North things. And as a compass points North so
should our actions point towards our own True North.
 A good example
of someone who made
his MAIN THING the MAIN THING is Bill Gates. Bill
Gates (left) started Microsoft together with his lifelong
friend Paul Allen (below right) while they were still in school.
He then built his business into one of the largest
empires on the planet and became the youngest
Billionaire in the world at 30. But what many people
do not realize is the high degree of focus
demonstrated by Bill & Paul.
 Bill Gates has
a photographic memory. This means that he is capable
of learning almost anything. It also means that he has
a virtually unlimited working memory capacity (The
maximum number of things that a person can think about
at once. The average person can pay attention to 5 to
7 things). He is therefore able to strategize to
almost limitless complexity, thus giving him an
unshakable edge in business and negotiation.
But his
exceptional intellectual capacity also brings with it,
one significant weakness. Distraction. It is quite
common to find people of Bill’s ability who amount
to very little in life. Many intellectuals have
terrible family lives, very poor relationships and
mediocre financial earning capacity. Few of them ever
rise above the crowd.
Bill himself
has many other interests besides computers; he has
read thousands of books on almost every topic you can
think of. This covers areas as vastly different as
biotechnology and medieval philosophy. When Bill
becomes interested in something he 'has to know'
everything there is to know about it. With Bill’s incredible brain
it would be easy for him to pursue almost any vocation
in the world; or even worse to pursue twenty different
things at one time as is so
common with people with his type of mind.
But Bill knows
his passion. He knows his Dream: " A computer on
every desk, and Microsoft software on every computer.
" Bill
knows where his true North is.
When Bill and
Paul started Microsoft, they started with a Dream and
a passion to achieve it. And their passion helped them
to focus their activities and to not allow any
distractions to take them away from their core focus.
It was not uncommon for them to work until they
literally dropped. And when they dropped, they would
cover themselves with a blanket, have a nap and then
wake up and work some more. In many cases there were
periods of days or even weeks when they wouldn’t
even go home. They would stay at the office and work.
16-20 hr days Monday to Sunday, were common for the early Microsoft
Team. Microsoft was a company built on Passion and
Focus.
Bill allowed no other hobby, no other interest,
no other person to take his focus. There was ONLY
Microsoft and that was ALL.
Here are two
stories which really illustrate just how focused Bill
really is:
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When
a friend gave Bill a Television he had the tuner
disabled so that all he could do was watch videos
with it. Bill was deeply concerned with developing
an unhealthy appetite for banal shows.
-
When
the pop star Sting phoned Bill asking to meet with
him, Bill phoned a friend and asked ' Who is Sting
? '. After meeting with Sting, Bill described him
as, ' A really smart guy. '
In time Bill
and Paul's grueling work started paying off. Microsoft won many significant
contracts to produce Microsoft BASIC for various
Microcomputer vendors and Bill Gates became a
Millionaire during his mid twenties (long before he signed his historic deal with
IBM).
We all know
the rest of the story, Microsoft landed the IBM deal
to produce a operating system for their new Personal
Computer. They leveraged this relationship for many
years and are now by far the world's largest software producer.
Bill and
Allen’s Dream has almost literally come true …
" A
computer on every desk, and Microsoft software on
every computer. "
In Everything
Truth, Faith & Love
Destin
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