Getting Unstuck: Focus Beats Friction

If you feel stuck, you’re not alone. Many leaders find themselves working harder than ever but not moving closer to what matters most. It’s not because they lack discipline or effort—it’s because their energy is diffused. And diffused effort is wasted effort.

The Power of Concentrated Energy

Sunlight scattered across a field feels warm. Concentrate that same light through a lens, and it becomes a laser—capable of cutting through steel. Effort works the same way.

Peter Drucker put it plainly:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently what should not be done at all.”

Leaders often confuse activity with progress. The more things they take on, the busier they feel—and the more they believe they’re moving. But like sunlight spread across too many surfaces, their energy warms everything and changes nothing.

The way out of stuck isn’t to do more. It’s to focus more.

A Lesson from Too Many Launches

I learned this lesson the hard way. I once worked for a company facing technology disruptions that were eroding the value of its core services. As Director of Product Strategy, I knew we needed to find new ways to create value.

My plan was to experiment broadly. If we tried enough things, surely one would stick. Over three years, we launched twelve new products. Each idea had logic behind it. None had leverage.

We spread our resources so thin that nothing got the attention or support it needed to succeed. A few did fine, but “fine” wasn’t enough to generate real growth. Looking back, I realize our problem wasn’t lack of ideas—it was lack of focus.

Step One: Clarify Your Top Priority

You’ll save a lot of wasted work when you focus your efforts on a singular, highest-value goal. Ask yourself:

If I could accomplish only one thing in the next three months, what would it be?

That question filters distractions and sharpens your focus. You may have a dozen worthwhile ambitions, but you can’t move them all forward at once. Choose one.

Setting a single top priority is the main task. But as one of my favorite authors, Ben Hardy, notes, you get the most benefit when you set goals that feel almost impossibly high. The higher the summit, the clearer the path becomes.

Jim Collins describes this in Good to Great as the Hedgehog Concept:

“If you try to be great at many things, you will never be great at anything.”

Greg McKeown makes the same point in Essentialism:

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

Step Two: Find the Crux

Every leader faces barriers—limited time, scarce resources, competing demands. But within that tangle, there’s usually one obstacle that matters most: the crux. Solve it, and progress cascades everywhere else.

Here’s how to find it:

1. Move beyond fluff. Don’t settle for vague answers like “we need better communication.” Ask what specifically prevents communication from happening.
2. Focus on the core challenge. Which one obstacle, if solved, would make the others easier or irrelevant?
3. Ask “why” repeatedly. Keep digging until you uncover the real cause, not just the symptom.

The crux is your leverage point—the one problem where focused effort will produce exponential impact.

Step Three: Write Your Stuck Statement

Once you know your top goal and your crux barrier, put them together into a single clarifying question:

How can I [goal] given that [barrier]?

For example:

• How can I hit our growth targets given that my team is already stretched thin?
• How can I innovate given that our systems punish mistakes?
• How can I be fully present with my family given that work demands never slow down?

This “stuck statement” isn’t just a way to describe frustration. It’s the first draft of your strategy. Naming your challenge clearly is what allows insight to follow.

The Takeaway

If you feel stuck, don’t start by doing more. Start by choosing what matters most—and by naming the one big problem that deserves your best attention.

Clarity isn’t a luxury; it’s leverage. And leverage, when applied at the right point, can move the world.

Coming Next

In the next post, we’ll go deeper into what happens after you’ve clarified your goal and named your crux. We’ll look at specific tools for uncovering hidden, often counterintuitive solutions—the kind that break through barriers you once thought were fixed.