focus4life.com/first

Your first FOCUS.

Five days. One team. One constraint. One play. One measured before-and-after. This page is the whole of what you need — whichever end of the week you are standing at.

HAVEN'T RUN IT YET

Register, and the guide arrives

Two minutes, no fee. You get the Team Guide — ten plays, a worksheet each, the five-day protocol — and your team's link for recording the week.

THE WEEK IS DONE

Publish what happened

The constraint, the play, the control number, the after number, both wall photographs, and the decision you took out loud on the Friday. Either answer counts. Zeros welcome.

What recording earns

Record a complete, honest run and you are a Founding Contributor: the full book free the day it ships, your name — or your team's, or neither, exactly as you choose at the time — in the acknowledgements of the next printing, and a referral code that is simply your team's name. The reward is for the recording, never for the number.

Before you start

  • Five consecutive working days the team can defend — an ordinary week, not the release freeze.
  • One sentence, signed by whoever manages the team: “For five days, this team may decline work that conflicts with the run. It comes with a number at the end.”
  • A wall, stickies, a marker, and a phone for the photograph.
  • A Runner — one named person who guards the week.

Where this comes from

The five steps began with Eliyahu M. Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, made popular in The Goal (1984). Clarke Ching took Goldratt's steps and rephrased them for the rest of us as FOCCCUS — Find the bottleneck, Optimise it, Coordinate, Collaborate and Curate everywhere else, Upgrade it, Start again — in The Bottleneck Rules (2018). FOCUS is Clarke's acronym with the three C's folded into one letter, used with his blessing. If you read one other thing on this subject, read The Bottleneck Rules.

The opening of the book, free

About This Book, The Wall, and the 10-Minute Version — download the PDF. Made to be forwarded.

01 FIND
02 OPTIMISE
03 COORDINATE
04 UPGRADE
05 START AGAIN ↺