I went to dinner at a place called The Yard House on a busy
Saturday night. I had never seen a restaurant this big, and it was packed with
a huge sports bar, giant televisions, an outdoor patio, and maybe 500 or 10,000
tables on the inside.
The evening was organized chaos—poetry in motion. And most
impressive of all: the waiters were incredibly helpful. I believed they were
there just for me, despite all the activity and commotion. When the waiter was
helping me with a Jetsons-sized menu, I felt like the only patron in the place.
I do believe the food tasted better than it might have actually been because
the wait staff was so incredibly helpful. They helped me handpick my order.
I was willing to forgive some of the little things that
weren’t quite right because the staff was there for me. The service was a team
approach. No matter which team player was up at bat, I was undoubtedly the most
important customer there. At least this is how I felt.
I felt as if I was being paid attention to at that
restaurant because, well, because I was. This goes to a larger point. Despite
everything that was going on at the restaurant, despite all the other people my
waiter had to help, my waiter focused on me in the moment. And it made all the
difference.
In business, and in life, if you can’t give 100 percent to
the mission at hand, then you might as well not be giving anything at all.
Now some of you might be thinking, “Hold on a second. I can
multi-task. Maybe you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but I can.”
Sure. You can do it.
Until you can’t.
Perhaps you have always been able to do three thousand
things at once. But sooner or later, doing more than one thing at a time will
come back to bite you in the donkey, shall we say.
Focusing, being present in the moment, is a skill. And like
any other skill, it needs to be honed. The better you get at it, the more
rewards you will reap. Let’s take a look at an example of someone who wasn’t in
the moment.
Chase Sampson, a college junior from Nashville, flew into
New York at three in the morning and didn’t sleep a wink between then and the
time he had to sit in the hot seat for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He told
the gracious Meredith Viera he pretty much had coffee flowing through his veins.
What with his traveling, his studies, the pressure of being on national
television, there was a lot to think about.
After the casual banter concluded, the first question posed
to Chase was: Homeowners buy surge protectors to protect their possessions from
unexpected surges of what? His choices were:
A) Electric Current
B) Water Flow
C) Air Pressure
D) Buyer’s Remorse.
For his answer—Water Flow—Chase received exactly zero
dollars and 5,276,153 hits on Youtube. Now, if he had taken a moment to set
everything else aside and just think about the question, he probably would have
chosen the correct answer. Unless he’s Amish, and then it would be
understandable. But he’s not Amish. He owned surge protectors. He wasn’t in the
moment. He dropped the ball. You dropped the ball, Chase!
Let’s look at a more intense example of someone who was in
the moment. Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette faced one of the greatest
challenges an athlete could face while competing in a past Winter Olympics.
Hours before she was take to the ice, her mother died of a massive heart
attack. Her mother was one of her greatest supporters, confidants, allies, and coaches.
Their time at the Olympics was a shared experience.
Rather, than give into her grief, Joannie Rochette continued
to compete even though she was devastated. Literally, hours after her mother’s
passing, she got back on the ice in competition and skated flawlessly. She
could not have done this had she though of her enormous sadness, the pressures
of the competition, the millions of onlookers thinking about how sad she must
have been. Joannie focused on the
present—on skating, on her technique, on her choreography—and it eventually
landed her the bronze medal. That she was able to compete, let alone earn a
medal, is beyond incredible.
Maybe you don’t have the same pressures as an Olympic
athlete competing on the world stage a short time after her mother passes away,
but you have got your own personal circus in town. We all do. How we deal with
it is what sets us apart from the rest. If we crumble, we will not succeed. If
we take whatever challenge faces us on head on, we cannot be stopped.
But you cannot face a challenge head on if you are too busy
worrying about the next challenge, the challenge on the left and the right, and
what you could have or should have done two challenges ago. In order to emerge
victorious, you have to be able concentrate on a single goal at the time you
are in the process of attaining it. Yes, you can and will focus on the other
goals and challenges when the time is right; when you do, you will focus on
those additional challenges as if they are the only ones who exist. No matter
how many challenges you face, the only way to overcome them is one challenge at
a time!
That is why, however large or small the challenge you face
is, it does not matter so long as you give it your complete attention and
focus. It didn’t matter to the Yard House waiters how many people were ordering
food—they deal with one order at a time—and why Joannie Rochette was able to
perform despite her deep personal loss:
she put one skate in front of the other.
