From drugs and gambling to 'networking' - chuck them if you want to succeed

They don’t come written in big bold letters - CAUTION: THIS IS A DISTRACTION - but the sideshows that divert our attention away from the essentials are many.

In sport and in music, the best players practice for hours, constantly sharpening their skills through a disciplined regime.

They learn to eliminate the distractions and shut themselves out of the mentally polluting social noise, whether it be praise or condemnation.

In business, we often expect people to take a seat and hope that they will automatically become the best.

It is no wonder that so many businesses are far from being world class in their sectors.

When people are unsure of what they are doing, their confidence drops, and they’ll do as little as possible, because every time they are asked to do their work, it becomes a tacit test to see if they are competent or not.

So they do very little, finding distraction after distraction, to the detriment of the organisation. They attend every meeting, opening their emails during discussions, and will neither prepare nor follow up.

If success is non-negotiable, the first thing to do is to find people who know what they want in life, who will jump through hoops of fire to achieve it, because they are likely to keep themselves engaged in the task at hand.

Eliminating distractions is a skill that has to be practised all the time. In his book entitled Leading, Sir Alex Ferguson, the former manager of Manchester United, wrote: “I am yet to encounter anyone who has achieved massive success without closing themselves off from the demands of others or forgoing pastimes.”

The bottle is breaking the lives of many of our youth. Every second television commercial is trying to sell the coolness of alcohol. As a result, our youth have come to equate fun with alcohol. We are losing them to the road, as they drink and drive. We are losing them to violence, as they kill each other. The dead are in a better place than the ones whose minds have been destroyed by alcohol.

Drugs like nyaope have contaminated the young minds of our communities, making them oblivious to the realities of today and denying them the opportunities of tomorrow.

And a new distraction is silently eating away our society — gambling. The banks are worsening the situation by making gambling available on their apps. It is grave immorality.

Banks which are supposed to lend money to people so they can buy homes, businesses or other assets to help them accumulate wealth have become major sources of distraction. They have made it easy for people to throw their money away.

Where is sustainability? It is a shame that banks allow people to take temporary loans at exorbitant interest rates and then help them gamble it all away. The regulators should stop this practice.

The winners in today’s race are those who have the most discipline. The distractions are endless, so parents, managers and true friends must be alert and always on the lookout for the distractions that their people may be facing.

Not all distractions are noticeably negative; some come cloaked as positive action. That book that you are trying to write may be distracting you from your day job. Socialites don’t build businesses, so the endless functions that you call “networking” are probably nothing but distractions. Red eyes that come from being wrenched from three-hour sleeps make it impossible to see the future.

There are 86 400 seconds in a day – decide how many you are willing to waste, then make the rest count.

* Muzi Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency. Views expressed are his own.

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