Focus

I’ve been doing a lot of consulting while I’m in transition. I’ve also chased quite a few opportunities that haven’t come to financial fruition. At the end of last year, (You know, like last week…) I decided that I need to focus on two very specific things – finding a full-time job, and paid consulting. One of those meets immediate income needs, the other future needs.

Of course, right after that, a good friend came to me with an at-risk opportunity. It was a really good opportunity, with good payoff potential. On the other side, it would require a lot of my time and effort, and take focus off of my two very specific things. I was really torn.

And then I had a net loss of three Twitter followers.

This may not seem like a big deal, and frankly, it’s not. Follower churn happens on Twitter constantly, and it’s healthy. Dormant accounts go away. People change their focus. Others decide they just don’t like what you have to say. All of that’s fine – it’s constant audience refinement.

With that said, I track my following, and generally have a weekly net gain, so I thought I’d dig into why I lost followers last week. So I opened up my analytics programs, and started looking at the data. It very quickly became obvious to me why I’d lost followers.

I hadn’t focused on gaining followers. The prior two weeks, I hadn’t done any follower management, and I hadn’t posted any good content. Of course I’d lost followers – I took focus off of that very specific thing.

I decided to focus on two very specific things – finding a full-time job, and paid consulting. Of course, right after that, a good friend came to me with an at-risk opportunity. I was torn. Click To Tweet

Last week, I did the hard work of telling my friend that I had to say no to her opportunity so I could focus on the specific things I needed to do.

This morning, I worked on my Twitter following.