Photo by David Travis on Unsplash
If you’re anything like me, you need to focus. There are times when you need to hunker down and get things done. Yet, your mind wanders. You daydream or think about what will happen later today or tomorrow. It could be a conversation, a meeting, or a vacation you can’t wait to start.
Your lack of focus might come from no desire to do what you are doing, how hard something is, or because you didn’t sleep well last night.
I often cannot focus well because of the whirlwind around me.
Clarity and focus come from having “white space.” This is where you can shut down social media or email and think. To narrow down what matters the most right now.
I’ve heard John Maxwell say that leaders could stop doing 80% of what they’re doing, and no one would notice. That feels high, but there is some merit to it.
Each day you must be able to say, “If I accomplish nothing else today, here’s what must get done.” That focus helps you to stay on track.
When you find your brain wandering, stand up, walk around, get some fresh air, and then return to something.
Clarity for Your Church or Organization
Clarity doesn’t just matter for you; it has enormous implications for your team and church.
Many teams lack clarity. They are stuck in a whirlwind of activity, simply doing the thing right in front of them. This is easy to do in a church because worship services come around with such regularity (every seven days), so there is a deadline to that whirlwind.
For our team, just like in our family, we discuss what is most important for the next 2-6 months as a team. What are we all going to be working on and moving towards?
In a church setting, it is easy to lose sight of why you are doing something or why something started, and slowly, it is just what you’ve always done.
Why Clarity Matters
Without clarity and focus, anything and everything is important.
This is where many churches and people get off track in their lives and ministries.
Clarity says this matters more than that.
That is hard to say because it determines ahead of time what you will think about, work on, spend money on, and give manpower to.
Whether you sit down and write this out or say it, you do this daily exercise.
The ones who accomplish things and see greater effectiveness are the ones who decide this instead of falling into it.
The days that I flopped into bed with a feeling of “What did I accomplish today?” were when I wasn’t focused and allowed my day to get away from me.
Amazingly, as you read through the gospels, you see Jesus’s incredible focus. He was fully present wherever he went. Whether teaching, healing, resting, praying, or spending time with his disciples, he was focused on what he was doing. When you think about what he did, you also understand what he didn’t do. He made the choices we have to make every day: what will get our time, energy, and attention?
Communicating Clarity
Patrick Lencioni said, “A leader is to create clarity, communicate clarity, and overcommunicate clarity.”
This is hard as a leader because to do this, you have to be clear on what you and your church are doing. This can lead to a divide, and some people may decide they don’t want to move forward with you, which is hard to navigate.
Once you have clarity, you must communicate it and continue to communicate it.
This can feel like a broken record, and you get tired of hearing yourself say it, but you must remember that every time you communicate clarity at your church, someone hears it for the first time. I say the same thing every Sunday when I stand in our volunteer prayer circle. Why? We need to be reminded why we are there, and every week, someone is serving for the first time, so they haven’t heard it.
How do you know if you’ve communicated it?
One is you are tired of hearing it. But the second is you start hearing people say it back to you. And thirdly, you start hearing people pray for it.
When these three things happen, people get the vision.
