Generations of entrepreneurs were taught that focus is key. While this is still valid for execution and operations, what about strategy?

Focus is key. That’s what entrepreneurs have been taught over decades. Don’t venture into too many verticals too early. Say no to some feature requests to keep your product simple. Refrain from talking to interested investors if you’re not looking to fundraise in the next 6-12 months.

In private life, advice looked similar. Stick to your craft. Don’t start a side hustle; focus on your main job.

Focus as a recipe for success is both current and outdated at the same time. Let’s look into that apparent contradiction.

The Arguments for Focus

Focus is a key instrument to work efficiently – nobody can do two things at once. When you pick up a task, it pays to finish it undisturbed before starting the next. Switching between tasks incurs costs in mental energy, time, and context. Furthermore, distractions such as social media divert focus, energy, and time from the task.

Focus is also great when your team has to reach a project milestone on time. Even when a project consists of multiple tasks, some tasks are more important than others: Those that define the critical path of a project.

The Arguments against Focus

Let’s switch sides. For many years, I’ve been involved in several activities besides my job as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company. I’ve served on school boards as a volunteer, I’m an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, and I teach leadership at a local university.

You might argue that I’d better place all my bets on my B2B SaaS company and devote every waking minute of my life to this endeavor. I will argue that cross-pollination from various activities is beneficial for any company. Leading a team of engineers might benefit from my leadership experience in the Armed Forces, the theoretical underpinnings of my university activites, and the practical experience from working with teachers in schools.

If you’re not convinced by my arguments, let’s look at financial investors. At what moment in time did any investor place all their bets on one single asset? Diversification has been key to any successful portfolio for ages.

One more thing. Have you ever thought about the impact on artificial intelligence on the focus discussion? Contemporary large language models are trained on all the information available on the internet. Depending on your task and on the chosen model, their performance is par or even better than human performance. Claude Code is better at coding than many junior developers. ChatGPT can summarize a 200-page report in a PowerPoint presentation better and faster than any business analyst could.

But what happens when you’re talking to the AI model of your choice and you get stuck? You would typically repeat the same instructions in the prompt five times, then say the model is hallucinating. How can you get out of this trap? By un-focusing. When I get stuck in a chat with an AI model, my secret weapon in the prompt field is this: “Let’s try a different approach.” That’s where my un-focused experience in various domains comes in. In contrast to a super-focused human or an AI model, I’m able to connect the dots between different domains and experiences and use them to narrow down a hold-up in a chat on a very focused topic. In the age of AI, this is the key advantage of humans with wide experience.

Conclusion

To be clear, I’m not against focusing. Focusing is great in execution and operations, and helps us to work efficiently on a given task.

However, focus can block the right strategy in a rapidly-changing world. Diversifying your activities and experience can help you choose to work on the right things: Efficiency is great, but never forget effectivity.