Only Focus on A, B, and Z

I was listening to the “excellence, actually” podcast recently, and one of the co-hosts mentioned an idea that I recognized but had not heard termed in such a way before. The idea was from author James Clear and suggested that to prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed, only worry about A, B, and Z.

What Does That Mean?

“A” is where you are now. “Z” is where you ultimately want to end up. “B” is the very next step. No matter if the process or task you’re working on has 5 steps or 500 steps, just focus on the very next step, and you can focus on the rest of the steps as you get to them.

You don’t have to get bogged down thinking, “I have to do this and then that and then this, but I don’t know how to do that, so then I have to figure that out before doing that other thing.” It doesn’t take long for your mind to spiral out of control and get overwhelmed.

I’ve been dealing with this recently with projects that aren’t too big, but they have a lot of unknowns. I might look at a project description as a giant block of text, try to break that up, go through it line by line, and try to figure out exactly what I need to do, but it hasn’t been working. I may be well aware of my A and B, which helps, but before long I’m looking in the middle and then at the last steps and “circling back” to the beginning with no real progress. Before long it all blurs together, and a lot of time has gone by where the only change has been a higher stress level.

I try to remember to think in atomic steps and just focus on the next step, but there are plenty of times I don’t. The A, B, Z idea might stick a little more.

Wide Applications

This can show up in different areas of life, like tech, productivity, or sports. As an example, legendary football coach Nick Saban emphasized a similar idea to his players and the importance of only focusing on the next snap.

The idea of A, B, and Z is roughly the same concept, but it’s one more variation for it to stick in my brain to try to reference when getting overwhelmed. Maybe it’ll help you too.

Thanks for reading!