This year is Apple’s 50th year in business. Decades ago, it lost creative focus, and spread itself too thin. Tim Cook describes how Apple does things, “We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.”

Each of these projects are special to someone; and each of those people need to accept the rejection of that project, in order to harness their energy and focus it on a few key projects. That’s creative focus: you’ll know you’re doing it right when it hurts.

A few of these projects are experiments. Many of these projects make up the foundation of Apple’s product portfolio. 

Balancing this is the art of creative focus. (Someone recently wrote about Figma’s product strategy.)

For me, after having dealt with (and still working through) many creative fevers, I think my brain is finally starting to appreciate the power of creative focus.

You’ll never have enough time and energy to work on every single idea you’re inspired by. Plus, even if you did (and you won’t), you wouldn’t enjoy it because you wouldn’t be able to put enough of yourself into each one. 

The process of exploring and choosing the ideas to focus on is, also, its own art. Will Larson wrote a great line about this, “Leadership is getting to the correct place quickly, it’s not necessarily about walking in the straightest line. Gleefully skipping down a haphazard path is often faster than purposeful trudging.”

Creative focus, which leads to creative abundance, starts with prioritizing. In deciding you can’t do everything, you can do anything. 

Creative focus starts with asking yourself, “What if that’s what it takes?”