The 16-Word Focus Line that Stopped My Scattered Effort

Twelve years after leaving the prescribed path at Procter & Gamble, I had a resume of berry exports, hostel ownership, bug food, and blogging—and one gnawing pain in my psyche: What am I supposed to do next?

I’ve had tons of fun and accumulated plenty of anti-regrets, but if I could go back and do it again, I would try something different. 

Finding my “superpower” last year was a breakthrough, but I still struggled with how to apply it. This lack of focus has also made me vulnerable to distraction.

• Social media whispering: “Hey Chris, since you’re not sure what to do, why don’t you just swipe here for inspiration/distraction?”
• Or Kim: “Hey Chris, I know I’m on boys duty today, but since you’re not doing anything important, do you mind doing the laundry while I’m out?” 

The Legend of Zelda Chris?

This frustration with scattered efforts led me to fantasize about an alternative:

What if I adventured through life with the clarity of a video game character on an exciting mission? 

Not a mission dictated by some external game designer (or a boss), but one hard-wired into my own innate programming. Different levels to pass. No known endpoint, just missions that keep up-leveling me. 

I’d often fail, but instead of thinking, “Boo hoo, maybe I should play Mario Kart instead,” I’d have no choice but to take a deep breath, learn my lesson, and try again. Keep going, one level at a time, accepting that while my performance may not be amazing, it’s what I was designed to do. 

Of course I don’t want some game designer to tell me what that mission is. But my personal experience, work with ARC beta testers, and research has led me to believe that we are all innately programmed for a unique type of “work” that energizes us and contributes to causes we care about. 

My Focus Line Takes Shape

This past month, I’ve narrowed in on a new and highly potent strategy for identifying and articulating this mission. It’s the tagline for my personal ‘video game,’ a single sentence, a self-narrative that aligns with my innate nature and acts as a heuristic to guide my next-level moves.

I call this one-line narrative my “Focus Line.” 

To find my Focus Line, I dove into years of personal data: psychometric assessments, year and month reviews, answers to my ‘Innate Edge’ questions, and external feedback. Then, leveraging AI’s pattern-matching superpower, I distilled this down into a core three-part framework:

1. The Problem. What external ‘itch’ do I instinctively scratch?
2. My Method. What’s my innate ‘superpower’ for scratching it? 
3. The Payoff. What rewarding outcome fuels me?

Then I honed these three parts down into my single sentence:

“I break conformity down into its first principles then engineer creative frameworks that unlock extraordinary potential.”

Here’s what it looks like:

Less Scatter, More That Matters

This Focus Line has become my guide – my story that I’m happy to brainwash myself into buying into so I act accordingly. 

When assessing my counterproductively-long list of options, I ask myself (and my AI assistants), 

• “Which of these alternatives is most in line with my focus line?”
• “In what way can I rejig these alternatives to align even better with my focus line?” 

Then I select a mission and proceed accordingly. 

My Focus Line isn’t static. It evolves. What’s important is that I believe in its directional correctness. I trust its guidance to help me debug past missteps and prevent life’s natural entropy from sucking me in scattered directions.

To avoid distraction and needless detours, I consistently recenter myself on this focus line. Plan next mission → Attempt it → Assess results → Make new plans (and potentially sharpen my focus line) → Repeat. 

My next mission?

Test if a simplified Focus Line approach can help others scatter less, compound more. 

Get Your Own Focus Line Snapshot

If you feel the pain of scattered effort and want more compounding focus, consider the quick ‘Focus Line Snapshot’ exercise. You answer 7 questions (~10 mins) and I’ll personally distill your unique Focus Line then send you a one-page Snapshot report. It’s a taste of the alignment, resonance, and clarity that ARC stands for.

Since each report takes me time to generate, I’ll temporarily close the form after the first ten submissions.

More Fuel for Your Focus Line

• Forget Infinite Potential, Find Your Inner Species – Map your unique wiring so your 16-word sentence almost writes itself.
• I Finally Found My (Not-So-)Superpower – A nerdy autopsy of how I uncovered the edge I now bet my life on.
• End Conformity Waste: A Call for Human Uniqueness Engineering – Why society’s addiction to conformity is the biggest untapped energy source on Earth.
• Goals vs. Systems: The Best Goal Is to Have Great Systems – Swap wish-lists for flywheels so your Focus Line compounds automatically.
• Optimize Your Personal Energy Instead of Your Time – Use pumps-and-leaks tracking to force-multiply every focused hour.