What's your focus?

What’s your focus?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this question? What are you focused on in your life or your job?  What’s your focus for the future?

It’s a simple question but a difficult one to answer for most people.  Ask this question of 10 of your coworkers and you’ll probably get most people staring back at you with a blank reaction with very few answers. In fact,  I’d bet there would very few responses that truly answer the question.

In fact, I asked myself this question today and couldn’t answer it to my own satisfaction.

Let’s look at what I’m doing these days:

1. Working for the Boy Scouts of America National Council on the web team.  In this role, I work within the marketing group and try to help the BSA use digital tools to reach out and engage with our audiences.
2. Blogging here about Technology, Strategy, People & Projects – although most of my recent writing has been focused on “The New CIO”.
3. Writing a few articles with co-writers (Gene De Libero for example – we are writing an article for an upcoming Cutter IT Journal).
4. Working on my Doctorate in Information Systems.  This is a TON of work but enjoyable.  I’m on track to finish up in 2012 and am will be starting my dissertation work in Spring 2010. I’ve been blogging about my “Road to the Doctorate”  on another blog.
5. Working on a few new entrepreneurial activities (some which I hope to be able to announce soon).
6. Trying to find some time to really dive into my passion for learning about photography and actually taking some photographs.  This is getting harder and harder for me these days.
7. Last but definitely not least, I’d like to spend more time with my wife traveling and just generally enjoying life.

Lots of things here…but I’m sure there are some of you who have much more going on so please don’t tell me that I’m a slacker if you do! 🙂

I’ve got quite a bit going on and I’m extremely lucky to be in a position to be able to do all of these things and the things that I’ve been able to do in the past.  That said, when I asked myself “what’s your focus?” I wasn’t really able to answer the question.

Am I an academic or a practitioner? Am I a technologist or a marketer?  Should i focus on the role of the CIO in the future or am I better positioned to look at how the role of COO or CMO might change over the coming years to integrate technology, marketing and the business?  I love the world of technology and marketing… can I bring this duality together as a focus?  Or…do I focus on the topic that really pulls at my heart strings…building a business of my own?

Think about yourself and your daily activities.  What are you focused on?  Are you getting up, driving to work and doing what has to be done to make it through the day?   Or are you focused on your passion and doing what it takes to keep that focus?  Are you focused on making your life better or just making your life easier?

What’s your focus these days?