No doubt, you have real work and serious projects that you want to get done – both personally and professionally.  Finishing those projects is what brings the highest degree of satisfaction from life.  Even for projects that will ultimately end up on the web, in many cases unplugging is necessary to get the best results.

As an artist and a blogger, I do several things before starting work on an idea:  I close Firefox, turn off my cell phone and eliminate all outside distractions.  There is simply no other way to get solid writing completed, it is imperative to focus 100% of your attention on it.  It’s like that in any project that you want to be successful and ultimately of high quality.

Multitasking is a myth, really you are accomplishing nothing even if you are getting work done because it will be sub-par.  And, there’s no point to completing projects that are sub-par in the first place.  If you want to do anything that you will actually be proud of after completion, it’s all about focusing.

Also, there is no sense in being more productive to produce results anyone else can.  If you’re doing that, you’re relatively dispensable.  There’s just no value in it.  If you’re a digital content producer, finishing content just to finish it without focus behind it will create results that get skipped over.  Quality, not quantity wins in the game of infinite choices.

Unfortunately focusing is a lost art, especially in my generation.  I’ve previously shared my observations on Gen Y – but something not discussed in that thread was the fact that our generation grew up multitasking.  We grew up working on projects and studying while browsing the web, eating dinner, and talking with our peers.  I only learned self-discipline later in life, but I had to unlearn the habits I acquired growing up multitasking.  You don’t have much to gain from it, because while you may feel like you’re getting more done, the results of your efforts suffer.

Some other thoughts on focusing…

Kill the sense of urgency, focus on creating inspiration/motivation instead

Too many people have a false sense of urgency with what they’re doing and pretty much life itself.  That sense of urgency perpetuates a loss of focus.  Urgency is not productivity, nor a motivator for the best results -  inspiration and motivation are far better.

Good marketing is the ability to get people to focus

Too much marketing is centered on the quick fix, the how can I interrupt you for 30 seconds.  Instead of trying to always win quick bits of attention, what if you engaged in content marketing to actually forge a relationship with your audience over time.  That would be a far more effective strategy.  You only get focused attention from people you’ve built permission with.

Carve out as much time during you day for focused work as possible

This work is what leads to productivity, fulfillment and ultimately happiness.  The collateral things are easy and anyone can do them, it’s the focused, unique work that’s valuable.

Focusing kills overthinking

By focusing on one thing, you’ll stop overthinking because your mind will have direction and purpose.  Focus destroys the unfortunate by-product of “too much to do” by forcing you to take yourself to task with what is at hand.  Your focus will cause you to take the first step, concurrently the hardest and most difficult of any project.

Focus is like a muscle

The more time you spend focused, the stronger this ability will get.  If you regularly force yourself to focus on something – anything – on a consistent basis, the ability to focus on all else in your life will become easier.

Focusing is how you enter a flow experience

A funny thing happens once you focus yourself on a task you excel at.  Bearing you’re passionate about it, you’ll inevitably enter a flow experience, where everything outside of your task ceases to exist, and you have consciously and unconsciously committed yourself to it.  A flow experience is effortless, but it is only achieved through that initial focus.

Let the multi-taskers lose their time bit by bit, and instead learn to focus and ultimately produce better results on everything you do.

Related posts  from The Future Buzz

Ignoring Others Is Necessary To Reach Your Potential

Accessing Your Creative Reserves

Inspirational Quotes Remixed

Related posts from around the web

Why Last Month Was The Most Productive Of My Life (Plugin ID)

The Magical Power of Focus (Zen Habits)

Where is Your Precious Focus Going Today? (The Positivity Blog)

I know you’re busy, but also interested in marketing trends.  Let’s simplify them for you by providing just the figures.

Future Marketing Trends – By The Numbers

Marketing spends

$55 billion - number of dollars marketers will spend on interactive (display, mobile, email, social, search) channels by 2014

21% – percentage of all marketing spends that the 55 billion figure will represent

7.8 billion - amount marketers will spend on display advertising in 2009

$15.3 billion – amount marketers will spend on search marketing in 2009

$716 million – amount marketers will spend on social media marketing in 2009

4% – percentage of budget allocated to social media as compared to search in 2009

9% – amount this number will grow to by 2014

(source)

$585 million amount in 2008 marketers spent on MySpace ads

$210 million amount marketers spent in 2008 on Facebook ads

9% - amount Facebook’s ad revenue will grow in 2009

15% – amount MySpace’s ad revenue will fall in 2009

(source)

Twitter by the numbers

21% – number of Twitter accounts that are empty placeholders

94% – number of Twitter accounts with less than 100 followers

5% – percentage of users who make up a staggering 3/4 of all Twitter activity (participation inequality)

Tuesday – the most popular day on Twitter (not a number but still an interesting fact)

62% – percentage of Twitter users from the US

(source)

2.56 billion – number of Tweets at the time of posting this (source)

22.99 million - number of unique visitors to Twitter.com in June of 2009 (source)

Facebook by the numbers

200 million – updated number of active Facebook users

30 million -number of those active users who access Facebook via mobile device

100 million - number of Facebook users who log in daily

66% – percentage of Facebook users who are outside of college

120 – average number of friends per user

900 million – average number of photos uploaded to the site monthly

10 million - number of videos uploaded each month

1 billion – number of pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

2.5 million - number of events created monthly

70% – number of Facebook users who live outside the US

950,000 – number of developers and entrepreneurs leveraging the Facebook platform

100 – number of applications that have more than 1 million active users

10,000 – number of websites using Facebook connect

(source)

LinkedIn by the numbers

41 – average age of user

$109,703 – average household income

53.5% – percentage of users with that $100k+  household income

64% – percentage of site made up of male users

34% – percentage who own a smartphone

80.1% – percent of college/post grad users

49% – percent of site made up of “decision makers”

6.5% - percent of users who are an EVP/SVP/VP

24% – percentage of users who have a Portfolio Value of $250k+

2.3 million – number of users who have more than 3 PC’s in their home

(source)

12.44 million – number of unique visitors in June, 2009 (source)

Web Video by the numbers

31% - percentage of videos viewed on a Google-owned sites

(source)

10.1 million – number of unique views on Hulu in April, 2009 according to Nielsen

10 billion – number of video streams in May, 2009, up 35% over last year

75.1 million – number of streams per viewer per month, up 20% over last year

6.05 billion – number of total streams YouTube served to 95.4 million uniques in May, 2009

(source)

Search by the numbers

13.104 billion - number of search engine queries in February of 2009

8.293 billion - number of searches which happened in Google-owned sites

2.696 billion - number of searches on Yahoo! sites

1.073 billion – number of searches on Microsoft sites

63.3% – percentage share of core searches which happened on Google sites

(source)

FriendFeed by the numbers

43,361 - number of subscribers Robert Scoble, the most popular FriendFeeder has.  He’s also the 112th most active user (at the time of posting this).

930 – number of subscribers Anika Malone, the most active FriendFeed user has.  She has 29,967 comments and 22,980 likes.

7,509 – number of subscribers the most popular room on FriendFeed has  RWW: The Future of Tech

(source)

1 million- number of unique visitors FriendFeed eclipsed in May, 2009

(source)

Wikipedia by the numbers

65 million - approximate number of visitors attracted monthly as of 2009

75,000 - number of active contributors

1,669 – number of site administrators

13 million – number of articles those contributors have worked on

260 – the number of languages articles have been written in on Wikipedia

318.75 million – total number of edits made to Wikipedia pages

Blogs by the numbers

133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

3.33 million– number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (July, 2009)

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere

59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

(same source as the last roundup)

Digg by the numbers

38.9 million – number of uniques Digg attracted in June, 2009 (source)

56% - percentage of frontpage allegedly controlled by top 100 users 

20 – number of individuals who allegedly control 25% of frontpage content

(source)

If there are any numbers specifically you want to see in future versions of these, let me know and I’ll try and find them.

Related posts from The Future Buzz

97 Images The Web Shared In 2008

42 Marketing Lists From The Future Buzz

The Two Kinds Of Web Popularity

Related posts from around the web

Social Media Marketing Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2009 (TopRank Blog)

The Decline of Traditional Advertising and the Rise of Social Media (PR 2.0)

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples (Peter Kim)

• A post on TopRank’s (my employer’s) blog on using a creative commons license as a marketing tool

• I face-off against Eric Friedman on Daily Blog Tips blogger face-off

Visualize what image the word beacon conjures in your mind:  perhaps a lighthouse casting light onto an otherwise dark horizon, or a signal fire atop a hill illuminating the night sky.  In the physical world, a beacon is used to draw attention, act as a guide, or call to action.  Civilizations have long used them to rally citizens together, protect ships from coastlines, and act as signal points.

But the concept of a beacon is not limited to purely physical signaling points.  There are beacons on the web – they are people, companies, networks, blogs, anything that can direct attention.

You must become a beacon or you are essentially at the whim of others who point attention at their own discretion, perhaps shining the light on you for fleeting moments…if you’re lucky.  Far better to become an arbiter of attention in your industry or niche rather than forfeit this to others.

The lighthouse example strikes me as the type of beacon most analogous to the web.  A lighthouse works by passing light through a system of lenses, focusing and directing the signal, as illustrated in the image below:

(source : Helen Beaglehole. ‘Lighthouses’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand)

This is similar to how beacons function online.  The only difference is constructing an amplification lens to spread your messages on the web is less of an exact science than the manufacturing of a lighthouse lens – it is a far more fluid process that must be ongoing.  This is because the amplification lens is made up of your network, search engines and social areas of the web – things that are in a constant state of flux.

The fastest way to amp up the worth of your own network is to bring smaller networks together with it so they can act as one larger network and gain the total n² value.
–Kevin Kelly

A strategic, precise approach (the directed lens) is more effective than a diffusive presence.  Imagine a coastline with thousands of lighthouses all casting diffused light in all directions – yet one is pouring focused light in only one direction.  To all ships traveling down that path, it would be obvious where to go.  Without specific, directed amplification, the light cast from a lighthouse is useless.  Same with your messages.  This speaks to the real value of your network and is why bigger is not better, a razor sharp approach is far more effective at accomplishing specific goals.

If damaged, light amplification lenses in lighthouses are almost impossible to repair, and upkeep is time-intensive.  This is true on the web as well, speaking to the importance of maintaining a strong digital reputation.

The source of light (your communications) matters too.  The amplification lens you create is only going to work with certain messages.  As the architect of your network, you will find your formula and direct it through the lens each time for maximum impact.

Only room for so many beacons

User attention does not scale, yet the number of those attempting to become beacons of information and ideas is going up.  But not everyone can become a beacon due to the very nature of what defines one – that it must be glaringly noticeable.  Following the lighthouse analogy, what this means is:

• You must construct the most directed, effective amplification lens possible
• Always feed the right content through the lens
• Remember, the internet is closer to an organic network than anything else, so the lens must undergo a fluid, continuous development process
• An ultra-high signal to noise ratio must be maintained – do not attempt amplification of irrelevant messages
• Protect the lens at all costs, it is extremely difficult to regain if lost
• Strengthen/sharpen the lens regularly

Related posts from The Future Buzz

Social Media Is Like The Matrix

5 Reasons You Should Learn About Social Media

The Two Kinds Of Web Popularity

Related posts from around the web

The Power of Now and the strategy of soon (Marketing.FM)

Social Media Program Lifecycle (Conversation Agent)

How do you become new, original, and louder than everyone else? (Tim Jahn)

Post image provided by Shutterstock, royalty-free subscription stock photography and vector art.

1. Develop a post archetype
2. Create a simple or unique design
3. Refine your writing quality and style
4. Find a way to view your topic from a fresh angle or different lens
5. Focus on a unique topic, or intersection of topics
6. Create a better signal to noise ratio
7. Focus on achieving consistency

Check out the full post at the Online Marketing Blog on 7 ways to develop a unique brand for your blog.