When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.

And it’s easier than ever before to be distracted.

You think “Oh, I’ll just check a quick email.”

But then somehow that leads to Facebook and then to YouTube and then to an hour later you’re watching a video about how to make a giraffe costume.

That’s why we, at Southwestern Consulting, often promote the concept of having a Master Metric.

Your Master Metric is your lynchpin activity.

It’s your keystone goal.

It’s your primary focus.

Your Master Metric is the one controllable activity that if you focus on it and accomplish it, that all of your other goals will come true as a bi-product.

This concept was first introduced to many of our coaches when they began their career in sales working for Southwestern Advantage.

Back in those days the Master Metric was 30 demos a day. They promised us that “if you show the books to 30 families every day you will have a successful summer.”

They said “it may not be true on any given single day but it will always be true over the course of the entire summer. Because it’s not the theory of averages; it’s the law of averages.” They were right – and it’s probably why the program is still around after 160 years!

When we started Southwestern Consulting our Master Metric used to be “2 Strong.”

The way it worked was we would get 1 point for setting an appointment and 1 point for running an appointment and every day we had to get some combination that added up to at least two.

It was our minimum level of acceptable performance.

When I was pursuing the World Championship of Public Speaking, I set a goal to practice each of my speeches 21x in front of live audiences prior to the competition.

Each of these are great examples of a principle we believe in at Southwestern and that we promote heavily with our coaching clients which is to put your self-esteem into your work habits and not your production.

The concept is to focus on what you can control and let the results and outcomes be the bi-product.

The benefit is that it keeps you zoned in on the right thing: doing the work it takes to be successful.

And that’s a good thing because if your self-esteem is in your results, rather than your work habits, then it tends to be an up and down inconsistent roller coaster of emotions.

But when you’re focused on the work, you’re always consistently improving your skills, skewing the averages in your favor and increasing your self-confidence which all inevitably point to an increased likelihood of eventual success.

And reducing it down even further to a single Master Metric increases the likelihood of your success even more because it improves the concentration of your focus.

It doesn’t mean you don’t track other things. It doesn’t mean you don’t monitor other indicators.

Most of our coaching clients have 6-9 CSFs (Critical Success Factors) that we measure. But whenever we can, we try to find one that is the special Master Metric. If you’d like help finding yours please click here.

But no matter who you are, what industry you are in, or what your goal is, you should ask yourself “what is my Master Metric?”

“What is one thing that is in my control that I can focus on achieving that if I do it consistently and repeatedly, over the long term, it will help me intimately accomplish all my other goals?”

That will help you win.

That will help you become a master.