The Ancient Question That Brings Extraordinary Focus—and Predictable Growth

Sometime between 161 to 180 AD, Marcus Aurelius wrote these words:

“Because most of what we say and do is not essential. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

Because many centuries later so many things compete for our attention, that question from the Roman Emperor is more necessary than ever.

Attention is perhaps the most precious resource we have. Everyone talks as though that title belongs to time, but what does our time follow? Our attention.

Yet, we misplace and waste it. You’ve surely had that experience where you rise from a fog and realize that you got sucked into scrolling on Instagram or TikTok. You look at the clock and realize that thirty minutes had vanished.

A half hour here and there seems benign, but the trouble is, we’re always building a habit or eroding one. There is no static state.

Those of us who run our own businesses and who spend much of our time online have to be honest about this reality for two reasons:

1. We work in a hostile environment. Nothing about being online is conducive to staying focused for any length of time. You want your monetize your attention through your client work or products. Meanwhile, brands and companies want to capture your attention (and your data). They monetize it by selling you something selling directly or indirectly (advertising).
2. Distractions block dollars. Unless we focus and finish, we can accomplish nothing noteworthy. Nothing at all. As noise increases, finding the signal becomes harder: What is important? What is necessary?

The solopreneurs who excel at giving their attention to what is most important or necessary will win—not the smartest or most talented; not the hardest working or best networked.

Such advantages are like books at your local library. They offer the wealth of millennia for free, and yet you’ll never reap the full benefit if you’re too distracted to recognize advantages for what they are and too spread thin to capitalize on them.

A core competency of high-achieving freelancers and solopreneurs is a three-part cycle:

1. Question
2. Focus
3. Perseverance

Ask what is necessary, attach your focus to it, and finish it. Repeat.

Distractions abound, and they always will. Unless you plan to move to a cabin in the middle of Nowhereville Forest and radically change your external environment, you must use that three-part cycle to create an internal environment that makes progress possible.

External adjustments can help: unsubscribing from emals, reducing clutter in your workspace, making a rule to not check email before 11:00am.

But the internal environment is the one you carry with you wherever you go. All the scaffolding collapses if you yourself don’t provide the sturdy edifice.

So, my friend, what is necessary today and this week? If you sit with the question, the answer will come.

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In 1963 Peter Drucker published an article titled “Managing for Business Effectiveness” in the “Harvard Business Review”, and he discussed the troublesome error of misallocation.

“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

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