Do you know what you want?

Do you have a clarity of purpose?

Not for lunch.  In life.

With your family. With your career. With your business. With your faith.

Well, maybe for lunch too.

See, I believe we all need clarity.

I have found that when I focus, when I am disciplined, and when I dig into something, I not only get more done – I avoid wasting time with the inconsequential.

You see, not having a clear idea about some things can be a recipe for aimlessness.

It’s less like: “I want to build a big and profitable online store.”
It’s more like: “It’s our goal to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find anything they might want to buy online.” (Amazon.com)

It’s less like: “I want to be a great lawyer.”
It’s more like: “I want to be the go-to bankruptcy lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

It’s less like: “I want to try to spend more quality time with my kids.”
It’s more like: “I will not look at my cell phone while spending time with my kids, and I will take each one of them to lunch once a week.”

And you know what?

Other people notice clarity too.

Clarity in our lives can inspire others, and even sell products.

Writer and marketer Donald Miller talks about this often in the context of telling a story.

He believes in clarity so much that he is adamant that websites pass what he calls, “The Grunt Test.”

He says that in 5 seconds, a stranger to your website should be able to answer 3 questions:

1. What do you do?
2. How does it make my life better?
3. What do I need to do to buy it?

If you are anything other than that clear, you are losing sales, he says.

Without clarity and focus on your life, you are not only losing sales, you are also wasting time.

Let’s not waste our limited time.

I was watching the movie Star Wars recently and wondered what made that movie so good. Of course, there are a thousand reasons. But I also noticed that if I paused the DVD on any frame, I could point toward any major character and say exactly what that person wanted. No character had a vague ambition. It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.

-Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years (Amazon)