How to Stay Focused as an Entrepreneur When Everything Wants Your Attention

How to stay focused as an entrepreneur comes down to protecting a small number of minutes from a huge number of interruptions. Startup mentor Terence Mauri puts it simply: an 8-hour workday is only 480 minutes, and if you get interrupted (or interrupt yourself) every five minutes, that’s 96 interruptions a day. Get clear on why you’re building, plan backwards from the result, stop waiting for perfect and guard your attention like it’s the scarcest thing in the business, because it is.

Terence is a coach and startup mentor who works with ambitious leaders around the world. He spent his first career in advertising with major brands, did an MBA at a crossroads, then moved into coaching and mentoring. When I asked him what the problem area is for most startup entrepreneurs when he first meets them, he didn’t say money or marketing. He said focus.

“I think there’s an unprecedented level of distraction, which makes it very difficult to stay focused on what really matters,” he told me. He calls focus “a hidden driver of entrepreneurial success.” I’ve thought about that line a lot since.

The 96 interruptions you don’t notice

Terence’s math is the kind that makes you put your phone face down. In those 480 minutes you have to prioritize, deal with emails, phone calls, meetings and interruptions. One interruption every five minutes works out to 96 a day. “You can see very easily that it would be very difficult to really focus and get things done if you’re constantly being distracted,” he said.

When he explained that to me, I was going through my head like, what did I do today? And when I really sat back and thought about it, I was distracted by emails coming in, messages coming up on my phone, Facebook. I’d go into Facebook to look for one thing, maybe a picture I needed, and the next thing I’d got a notification or a message. It’s so distracting, right?

That’s the honest version for most of us. Nobody plans to lose the morning. You just open one app for one reason and come out 20 minutes later with nothing done.

The fix starts with seeing it. For one day, keep a tally every time you switch away from the thing you meant to be doing, including the times you interrupt yourself. The number is usually higher than you think. You can’t protect your focus until you know where it’s leaking.

Too much information, not enough attention

Terence pointed to the economist and cognitive scientist Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel prize and famously wrote that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Terence’s version was “too much information leads to a poverty of attention,” and his point was that there’s a battle for our attention going on. I told him that quote was going to stick with me, and it has.

His bigger point was about ideas. “It’s good to come up with ideas, but it’s about really then implementing the idea and sustaining the idea,” he said. That’s where distraction does the real damage. It doesn’t stop you having ideas. It stops you finishing them.

I’ve written before about being addicted to information instead of execution, and this is the same trap from another angle. Every new podcast, post and notification feels like progress. Most of it is just more input competing for the attention you need to execute.

Start with your why, because you only get about 960 months

When I asked Terence what he’d tell someone stepping into personal development, he gave me a three-point plan. Number one was purpose: be very clear about who you are, what your values are, what your mission is and what excites you. That clarity, he said, gives you the energy and the fuel to spark all sorts of opportunities.

Then he hit me with the numbers. “I’m a numbers man,” he said, “and I’ve worked out that if we’re lucky, we have 960 months to live.” That’s 80 years. By his estimate we sleep for about 300 of those months. “I can see everybody now just like quitting their jobs and going traveling around the world,” he joked, but the point was serious. Time is limited, and you can use that to force clarity on what you want from your months.

This is basically memento mori for founders. When you genuinely remember the clock is running, it gets a lot easier to say no to the stuff that doesn’t matter. Focus isn’t only about blocking distractions. It’s about knowing what you’re saying yes to.

Plan backwards, then beat your inner perfectionist

Terence’s second point was to think backwards. Begin with the end in mind, then plan back from it and work out what success specifically looks like along a timeline. “Break it down, break it down, simplify it, and create a plan,” he said.

His third point was the one he called most important: overcome your inner perfectionist. “Everyone has this inner perfectionist which will keep stopping you from doing what you should have done yesterday and the day before,” he said. “The world will never be perfect, so you’ve almost got to get started.”

My reaction was pretty blunt. Get your butt in gear. Start getting addicted to success. Perfectionism looks like high standards, but most of the time it’s just a polished reason to not start. And when you’re not working on the real thing, you’re far easier to distract.

Clarity of focus: one thing, done well

When I asked Terence what takes a startup from good to great, he said speed, and he tied it straight back to focus. He pointed to companies like Airbnb, Uber and WhatsApp as examples of speed to market, fast execution and clarity of focus. “They all say they only want to do one thing and do it well,” he said.

He told me Airbnb’s Brian Chesky kept his strategy on half a page of A4 paper. I can’t confirm that detail, but the principle is strong. If your strategy doesn’t fit on half a page, you probably have too many priorities, and too many priorities is just distraction with a business plan.

He also told the story of how Uber’s founders were frustrated waiting for a taxi in Paris and decided it wasn’t good enough. A problem, turned into a solution, then executed fast. I said those companies all seem to disrupt their industry. So look at what you’re doing and ask how much impact you’re really going to have in the industry you’re playing in.

Learn faster, fail smarter, risk braver

When I asked what separates a losing entrepreneur from a successful one, Terence named two things. The first was passionate curiosity: having a point of view on trends that are exciting and trends that are threatening, and taking intelligent risks.

“One of the pieces of advice I give to entrepreneurs is really we’ve got to learn faster and fail smarter,” he said. “I’d add to that we need to risk braver.” Paired with that is the discipline to execute ruthlessly. Curiosity without focus is just browsing. Curiosity with focus becomes a product.

Sisu: the grit to face the angry bear

The second thing Terence named was the ability to deal with setbacks. He came across a Finnish word while working in Finland: sisu. It means resilience and grit. He described it as “the ability to face that angry bear outside your door,” whether that bear is your competition, your own fears, self-doubt or failure.

I loved that. Sisu. “We need more sisu in our lives,” Terence said, “so that we grow through that adversity rather than let it defeat us.”

When I asked how entrepreneurs build that kind of courage, he pointed to Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp. Koum left Ukraine as a teenager with his mother, and the family relied on food stamps. His mother later died of cancer. He went on to co-found WhatsApp, and when Facebook bought it for about $19 billion, he signed the papers outside the social services office where he used to collect food stamps. Terence said Koum’s story is about taking productive pauses, reflecting and remembering you can take strength from hard times.

Terence also told me about his late grandfather from Italy, who’d been through two world wars and sustained injuries but still got back up, stayed in the moment and stayed generous and kind. “In life we all have to face our own Everest,” Terence said. Another mentor of his had a favorite saying: “We’ve got to eat problems for breakfast.” I asked if he told him that in Italian. He did, Terence said, and then they ate croissants and sipped cappuccino.

Why does this belong in a piece about focus? Because setbacks are the biggest distraction of all. A bad week can pull your attention for a month if you let it. Sisu is what gets you back to the work.

Keep thinking like a startup as you grow

When I asked what startups waste their time on, Terence talked about processes that go stale. Going from a hundred people to a thousand means refreshing your processes, systems and policies, getting rid of some and replacing them. Most companies don’t. “What defines their success at the beginning can become a very damaging Achilles heel later on,” he said.

I once heard Tony Hsieh, the late Zappos CEO, put it as the bigger the ship, the harder it is to steer. I’d rather have a jet ski or a small speedboat I can turn quickly. Big isn’t always best. You want to move quick and adapt to the changes around you.

Terence pointed to Blockbuster and Kodak as lessons in not listening to the market and not changing enough. “If you put your head in the sand, this is what happens,” he said. I threw MySpace in there too. Every outdated process is one more thing pulling attention away from the work that actually matters now.

Grow your posse so you’re not carrying it alone

Terence credits his networking for some of his best work, including time spent inside McLaren, the Formula 1 company, where he said even the building was designed to promote focus and collaboration. He calls it growing your posse, and he says everybody needs three kinds:

• A personal posse: friends and family who give you emotional support.
• An operational posse: the people you work with day to day.
• A big ideas crowd: people you may not know personally but who should be on your radar, because they bring new information, knowledge and opportunity.

I said it’s like strength in numbers. Link with people, collaborate, and you become more powerful. When we’re kids in the playground, we go up and introduce ourselves to random kids with no shame at all. As we get older, it almost feels weird to do it. Terence called that the inner critic at work. Your posse helps you focus too, because the right people pull you back to the important stuff when you drift.

Think 10x, not 10%

Terence talked about moonshot or 10x thinking, which he associated with Google. Most people chase a 10% or 15% improvement, he said, and that kind of thinking is status quo driven and consensus driven. It’s imitating, not disrupting. 10x thinking asks what you could do to make something dramatically better. I’d had Grant Cardone on the show not long before, and his book The 10X Rule is all about this.

Here’s how that connects to focus. You can’t think 10x while answering 96 interruptions. Big thinking needs uninterrupted time.

Read for strategy, not just inspiration

When I asked for his cornerstone books, Terence said anyone who wants to keep growing has to be a fast learner and go for breadth and depth. His first pick was Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, which he said is about being more strategic and focusing on prevention, “not just being on the back foot every day.” He also recommended Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg for networking and growing your posse, and All In by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton for staying energized and delivering on your promises.

That first one is the focus book in disguise. Reacting all day is the opposite of focus. Strategy is deciding in advance what you’ll ignore.

How to stay focused as an entrepreneur: a checklist

1. Track one day of interruptions, including the ones you cause yourself.
2. Write your purpose and values in a few lines you can actually remember.
3. Count the months, then decide what you want them to represent.
4. Plan backwards from the result and break it into steps.
5. Fit your strategy on half a page and cut what doesn’t belong.
6. Ship before it’s perfect, then improve it.
7. Expect the angry bear and decide in advance how you’ll get back to work.
8. Refresh processes as you grow so old systems don’t eat your attention.

FAQ

How do you stay focused as an entrepreneur?

Protect your time from interruptions, get clear on your purpose, plan backwards from the result and start before things are perfect. Terence Mauri calls focus a hidden driver of entrepreneurial success.

How many interruptions does the average workday have?

It varies by person. Terence Mauri’s illustration is that an 8-hour day is 480 minutes, so an interruption every five minutes adds up to 96 a day, which makes deep work almost impossible.

What does sisu mean?

Sisu is a Finnish word for resilience, grit and determination. Terence Mauri describes it as the ability to face the angry bear outside your door, whether that’s competition, fear, self-doubt or failure.

Why is perfectionism bad for entrepreneurs?

It stops you from starting and finishing the work that matters. As Terence Mauri puts it, the world will never be perfect, so you have to get started and keep executing.

What is 10x thinking?

10x thinking means aiming for an improvement many times better instead of 10 or 15% better. It pushes you past imitation and status quo thinking toward ideas that can actually disrupt an industry.