Concept of personal bandwidth is critically important to people who are highly productive. All of us could try to be jack and Jill's of all trades and plant our crops, go hunting, make our clothes, do everything from scratch, make our furniture, but it's hard to do that and do it well, and have any free time for anything else. You've heard me talk about focus, and I want to go a little deeper into that. And it's simply the fact that again, our brains can't multitask. They can focus on one thing at a time. This is why it's critically important to say no.

So often the things that take you outside of your core area of expertise, and remove your focus on bandwidth. Whether you're an individual who just works for yourself, one person company, or you're a CEO who is on top of a structure with a million employees. There's only so much bandwidth within your organization to try to do new things, if you are a one person company, you really got to be diligent. But even if you are the CEO of Walmart, and you have a million employees, you still can't try to sell cars all of a sudden, because that's not within the bandwidth. What the people who work at Walmart know how to do is just, they're not in the car dealership business. Know what your focus is.

And even if someone has a good idea, even if someone has something that interests you, you've got to make sure that that new thing doesn't push away. The one thing you're already doing well, there may be times when you say, Wow, this new idea is so exciting. So great. It's so wonderful. I know it's going to be so successful. You literally stopped doing what it is you were doing and you now devote full time to this new project.

Well, that's not a bandwidth issue. Everything is now within the bandwidth of your focus. But be careful about adding on new projects. There's this perception in the old corporate world that the way to get ahead is just to say Yes boss to anything and everything. Be on every committee, every assignment, every project traveled to every foreign locale, and in certain corporate institutions that might still work for you. But in general, that's not what the most productive people in the world do.

They have a clean, clear sense of what their bandwidth is, and it can vary. Some people have a very narrow bandwidth but if they use that to focus on being the best in the world at something, they can be wildly productive and rich and famous. And I hate to sound superficial, you may have no desire to be rich and famous. But you can have an extraordinarily narrow focus. If you're good at one thing, and you go deep, it can work. On the other hand, you can be highly talented, have lots and lots of skills, be good at 10 things.

But if you're focused on 20 things, the bandwidth isn't right. So be keenly aware of your own personal bandwidth. do an assessment right now and be honest with yourself right in the q&a section. What do you think your personal bandwidth is? How many things can you really do well, in a day, a week or a month, or a year, how many things can you truly focus on and do them well?