We've all been taught to keep our eye on the ball, right? And we all are praised for juggling lots of balls at the same

But what if keeping our eye on all those balls is limiting our potential?

A friend of mine was talking to me about her business. She's so busy she can't see straight as she's heads-down creating marketing messaging and content for a number of clients. She's working every day and she's exhausted.

Her goal is to do the brain work for clients, to share her expertise and knowledge by training folks to do for themselves. But somehow the Gravity of "Focus on customer success" has grabbed her and sucked her down into the doing vs the teaching. She's doing tactical, execution work for folks who can't do it themselves, writing emails, designing campaigns.  All work that is necessary but a fairly big waste of her skills and expertise. She's taking on all that tactical work because she is, indeed, keeping her eye on the ball.  She is solving her clients' problems.

She's also sacrificing her own growth opportunities, focusing on all those balls.

We've all been there. I spent years slowly getting sucked down by the Gravity of my consulting business working with turnarounds.  My focus was to, well, turn them around. Whatever it took.  By the end of ten years I was so deep into the tactical (as well as the strategic) I was spending 100 - 125 hours a week working for my clients, focused on their success and grabbing every ball that needed grabbing to make them successful.  I was catching and lobbing balls into the air with the best of them. Even as my clients stood back and let me drive the changes in their business.

I was focused on the right goal - but catching too many balls on my own.

It's easy to have it happen to any of us. We see something that can help us move toward a goal and we latch onto doing it. Even if doing that thing isn't the best use of our skills or time. It means we're busy, we're focused and we're making progress, right? Wrong.

Picking the right ball, continually examining and realigning that focus is the key to growth.

Being busy, grabbing ALL the balls and doing, doing, doing isn't necessarily the path to growth or success.

Sometimes we get thrown curve balls, or easy lobs, or sliders. It's best to let them all pass and focus on what really matters; working smart and focusing our energy on the best opportunity, not just the balls that are easy to catch or flying right by us!

Successful companies focus on a goal, and then align all their actions to meet that goal. Successful professionals do the same.

Trying to catch all the balls that might contribute to our goal won't propel us to growth. It will just wear us down.

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