I once convinced myself I had a serious leadership focus problem.
Not the casual kind. Not the “too many tabs open” kind. The deep, philosophical, mid-career-leader-staring-at-his-coffee-at-4:30am kind.
You know the one.
The kind where you have a clear vision, a structured calendar, frameworks on your iPad, and yet somehow you are still reorganizing your notes app instead of doing the one thing that actually moves the needle.
Naturally, I did what any reflective, system-loving human would do.
I audited my productivity stack.
Was it Evernote? Too many notebooks. Was it Trello? Too many boards. Was it my content calendar? Too many ideas.
Then I blamed energy. Then rhythm. Then distribution. Then “strategic fatigue,” which is a very professional way of saying, “I am doing a lot and finishing less.”
The Morning I Stopped Blaming My Tools
But the real moment of truth came on a Tuesday morning.
Coffee. Sunrise. iPad open. A perfectly planned deep work block sitting right there on my calendar.
And what did I do?
I adjusted the font size of a document I had already adjusted three times.
That is when I paused and thought, “Sir. This is not a focus problem. This is something else.”
So I started retracing my mental open loops. Projects. Ideas. Conversations. Commitments.
And then I found it.
A commitment.
Not a big one. Not a dramatic one. A small, quiet, almost invisible commitment I had made to myself months earlier.
“I’ll circle back to that later.”
You already know where this is going.
Later never came. But the commitment never left.
It just sat there in the background of my mind like an open browser tab that keeps playing audio even when you cannot find which tab it is.
Every time I tried to focus on something important, my brain would whisper, “Shouldn’t you close that thing first?”
So instead of deep focus, I experienced light distraction, strategic drifting, excessive organizing of already-organized systems, and the sudden urge to redesign things that were not broken.
Very professional avoidance.
Here is the funny part.
I had built entire frameworks about clarity. Taught rhythms. Spoken about aligned execution.
All while carrying a tiny, unfinished commitment like a pebble in my leadership shoe.
Not painful enough to stop walking. Just irritating enough to ruin my stride.
So one morning, instead of creating another system to fix my “focus,” I did something radical.
I closed the commitment.
One email. One decision. One “this is complete.”
Total time: seven minutes.
And suddenly, silence.
No mental tug. No background tension. No mysterious urge to reorganize my digital life.
Just clarity.
That is when the realization hit me. And it made me laugh.
I did not have a leadership focus problem.
I had an open-loop problem.
The Pattern Most High-Capacity Leaders Miss
Here is what that Tuesday morning taught me about leadership focus.
Unfinished commitments quietly tax attention. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But constantly.
Your mind keeps scanning for closure while you are trying to create momentum. So you call it distraction. You call it burnout. You call it lack of discipline.
When in reality, your brain is just asking, “Are we going to finish what we said we would?”
I call this Commitment Drift. It is not laziness. It does not look like chaos from the outside.
It looks like a full calendar. A clean inbox. A prioritized task list. It looks exactly like a leader who is doing a lot and moving fast.
But underneath the activity, open loops accumulate. Commitments you made six months ago and never revisited. Projects that launched but never officially ended. Recurring obligations you kept by default rather than by decision.
Each one small. Together, they create a quiet drain that no productivity system can fix.
The bigger your vision, the more dangerous small unfinished promises become. Because they create friction inside an otherwise aligned system.
This is why experienced leaders with solid systems still end Friday wondering why nothing important moved. The system was sound. However, the commitment load underneath it was not.
What a Commitment Actually Is
A commitment is not a goal. It is not a priority. It is a declaration that this is happening regardless of what shows up.
Most mid-career leaders treat commitments like preferences. They hold them lightly. They renegotiate them easily. And then they wonder why focus keeps slipping despite good intentions and solid systems.
Here is the harder truth: the same logic applies in reverse. Commitments you are no longer actively honoring but never formally closed are still running in the background. Still drawing attention. Still asking for resolution.
Closing them is not failure. It is, in fact, one of the highest acts of leadership.
The Open-Loop Audit
When I notice scattered focus now, I do not immediately adjust my tools, calendar, or content schedule.
I ask a simpler question: “What commitment did I start that I never formally closed?”
Then I run a short audit. Three steps.
Step 1: List Every Active Commitment
Not your tasks. Not your priorities. Your commitments. Recurring meetings. Ongoing projects. Relational obligations. Self-imposed standards. Anything that generates a sense of obligation when you don’t do it. Most leaders discover they are carrying three to five times more commitments than they can reasonably sustain. That list is the actual problem.
Step 2: Sort by Decision
Which commitments are you keeping on purpose? Which are you keeping by default because you never decided otherwise? Kept by purpose means it is aligned with what you are building now. Kept by default means it is residue from who you were building then. Not all legacy commitments need to be closed. But they need to be carried consciously, not accidentally. As a result, this sorting step alone will shift how you see your week.
Step 3: Close One
Not reassign. Not postpone. Actually close it. One email. One decision. One “this is complete.” The audit will not feel productive. It does not create anything. It clears space. Consequently, clearing space is where leadership focus actually lives.
The Real Work of a Focused Leader
The leaders who sustain focus over the long haul do not have more willpower. They do not have better systems. They have fewer open loops.
They finish what they open. They close what they start. And they do this work regularly, not just when they feel scattered.
Focus was never the enemy.
Unclosed commitments were.
And yes, I still occasionally catch myself adjusting a font size instead of finishing a decision.
But now I smile when it happens.
Because I know what my brain is really saying.
Finish what you opened. Then your focus will return.
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