My last post was the first in a four-letter-word series, F.C.E.C. Part 1. I provided you with a teaser about an acronym that I’m using to guide my life right now. If you haven’t read that post, feel free to jump over there and then come back. It might help you make sense of this post.

So after you focus on something (a task, a person, something you want), you need to take the next step and Commit. I’m not talking about the easy kind of commitment where you say you’re going to do something, merely paying lip-service. I mean the deep, emotional commitment that means you really, truly are dedicated to making this happen.

If focus is what you are going to do, committing defines when and where you are going to accomplish your task. This is the essential second step in the process. Referring back to goals, you can be totally focused on something (“I’m going to get the laundry folded today”), but if you don’t commit to actually doing it you’ll still have piles of laundry all over the room. Come to think of it, that’s where our family’s laundry is right now (harkening back to my idea of how difficult it is for me to say That’s Good Enough).

But seriously, one of the reasons that our laundry doesn’t get folded and put away is that I simply don’t commit to accomplishing that task. It’s not sufficiently important to me, on a regular basis, to get the job done. I can focus on it all I want. Every time I walk by the laundry waiting to be folded I’m focused on it. But when it comes time to do the job…no commitment.

The other important facet of committing is that you have to bring the task or goal to the forefront and let it take complete control. In F.C.E.C. Part 1, I talked about the misconception of multitasking. The truth is, if you commit to a task, then it really needs to get as much of your attention as it needs to get done. There’s no way around it. If you focus and then commit, you’re pretty far along the cycle.

As Woody Allen said “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” The same goes for commitment following focus. Once you’ve got those two completed, you’re probably 80% of the way to finishing the task.

So give it a whirl today. Try focusing and committing to something that needs done!