Striving towards Excellence

 by Karthik Gurumurthy 

One of the primary reasons that people and organizations fail to get to greatness is that they try to be too many things to too many people. I'll use the Confucius quote I often use here: “Man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

The most successful human beings are wildly focused. They have a very clear picture of what it is they want to create by the time they reach the end of their lives and then they have the discipline (and courage) to stick to their knitting – saying “no” to everything that is not mission critical. TD mentioned in one of the Kate conferences that Michael Phelps the Olympics gold medalist did not do swimming, gymnastics and tonnes of other stuff. You focus on one and get the job done.

 So my gentle recommendation to you is to  have the single mindedness of purpose. Take away from your schedule all that is unimportant – these are the things keeping you from getting to your dreams. And then once you do your clean up, focus, focus, focus. You'll be surprised how good you will then get at being great.