The Missing Ingredient in Your Ambitious Goals: Macro Focus
What Macro Focus Is, Why It's Important, Five Patterns That Sabotage Macro Focus (And How to Fix Them)
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I’ve supported hundreds of engineers and leaders with various ambitious goals, and the difference between those who make it and those who don’t isn’t talent or effort. It’s something most people have never heard of: macro focus.
Most people who pick me as a coach want more. More scope, more recognition, more impact. They’re smart, competent, and have a lot of potential. They have big ambitions, yet somehow, something is missing, and they feel stuck.
Wanting more is the easy part. What’s harder is figuring out what exactly you want, how to get there, and committing to it long enough to see results.
My obsession with performance psychology (from entrepreneurs to athletes to Formula 1 drivers) has taught me that most people think focus means productivity hacks or to-do lists. But that’s just micro-focus. Macro-focus is something entirely different.
What is Macro Focus?
Macro focus is the art of choosing your battles and fighting them well. It’s the strategic, long-term commitment to a specific direction, not just for days or weeks, but for months or years. While micro-focus is about managing your attention hour by hour, macro-focus is about managing your trajectory quarter by quarter.
Think of it like this: micro-focus helps you climb the ladder efficiently. Macro-focus ensures you’ve leaned it against the right wall.
The problem is, even smart, ambitious people get this wrong. Let me show you how and why that happens, so you can learn how to overcome it.
Five Patterns That Sabotage Macro Focus (And How to Fix Them)
Most ambitious people aren’t lacking in effort or intelligence. They’re lacking in focus. And I don’t mean they can’t concentrate. I mean they haven’t committed to a clear direction long enough to see it through. Here are the five patterns I see most often.
Pattern #1: Lack of Clarity
When you don’t have clarity on where you want to get to, you say yes to projects, roles, or opportunities that seem interesting in the moment, but don’t add up to anything long-term. You end up reacting instead of choosing.
I’ve been there myself. At Uber, I told myself I was aiming for more scope and leadership so I could get to Staff and eventually move into EM. It was more like a wish rather than a clear plan.
But the reality was, I was in an environment that didn’t fit me culturally. I stayed longer than I should have, hoping things would shift or that I could power through. Eventually, I did get more scope, but it came at the cost of burnout. I lost time, yes, but more than that, I lost energy by forcing progress in the wrong environment.
The fix: Get specific about what success looks like for you. Not just the title or the number, but the actual day-to-day reality you’re working toward. What kind of problems do you want to solve? What kind of team do you want to work with? What does a good week look like? Clarity isn’t just about the destination; it’s about understanding the journey you’re signing up for.
Pattern #2: Doing Too Many Things at Once
Ambitious people often want too many things at once. And often, they’re in conflict.
One client had been in the same role for ten years when he was suddenly laid off. The goal was clear: find a new role, ideally at a company that aligned better with his values and long-term direction. But at the same time, he wanted to help a friend build a prototype for a startup. Both things needed deep, focused effort. Instead, he found himself context-switching constantly and making slow progress on both fronts. We had to get honest about what he could realistically commit to—and what would have to wait if landing a new role was truly the priority.
The fix: Pick your primary focus for this season. Not forever, just for the next 3-6 months. Everything else becomes secondary. Yes, you’ll miss out on some things. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. Saying no to good opportunities is how you create space for great ones.
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Pattern #3: Not Doing Enough
There’s a gap between intention and action. One client wanted to increase their visibility at work, with the goal of being seen as a stronger candidate for promotion. But week after week, they weren’t taking the steps that would make that happen: speaking up in meetings, sharing their work more broadly, volunteering for cross-team efforts, or even preparing intentionally for their 1:1s.
The intention was there, but the follow-through wasn’t. Here’s what made it click for them: we did the math. At their current pace of action, it would take years to build the visibility they needed. But their promotion cycle was in six months. The gap between their timeline and their effort was massive. Once they saw that, everything changed. We shifted from vague ambitions to specific, weekly commitments. Not suggestions, commitments. One new person reached out to. One meeting where they’d speak up. One work artifact shared broadly. Suddenly, progress became visible, measurable. And more importantly, they finally believed it was possible.
The fix: Scale your effort to match your ambition. Big goals require big commitments. If you’re not willing or able to invest significantly in something right now, either scale down the goal or push it to a future season when you can give it what it needs.
Pattern #4: Not Trusting the Process
When I started my coaching business, I thought a few months would be enough to get things off the ground and start turning a profit. Very naive of me.
I had a solid plan: build a foundation, grow slowly, focus on doing good work. But I constantly second-guessed it. Should I be doing more outreach? Should I pivot my niche? Should I launch something else entirely?
What I’ve learned is that even the right plan will look like it’s failing in the early stages. The hardest part isn’t creating the strategy, it’s staying with it long enough for it to start compounding.
The fix: Document your plan and your reasons for it. When doubt creeps in (and it will), you’ll have a record of your clear-headed thinking to reference. Build in regular reflection points, but between those checkpoints, trust the process. Most overnight successes are years in the making.
Pattern #5: Quitting Too Soon
Even when people start with a plan, many don’t stick with it. They get discouraged when progress is slow. They quit too soon.
I see this constantly with people trying to break into Staff or leadership roles. They’ll try a new approach for a few weeks, not see immediate results, and assume it’s not working. But most meaningful change has a lag time. The work you do today might not show results for months.
The fix: Set realistic timelines and checkpoints. If you don’t know what that looks like, try to find others who are on a similar journey further ahead. Seek external perspectives to help you shape your timeline, then stick to it. To not make any impulse decisions, remain objective by baking into the plan both success criteria and exit/pivot criteria that you set upfront and compare against.
Here’s the Thing
Without deliberate focus, months can go by without meaningful movement. You’ll be busy. You’ll be trying. But you won’t be progressing toward what you actually want.
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem.
What moves people from potential to performance isn’t just the ability to work hard. It’s the clarity and confidence to work hard on the right thing, for long enough to see real results.
Most people never develop this skill. They bounce from goal to goal, opportunity to opportunity, always busy but never quite arriving anywhere.
But if you’re reading this, you’re not most people. You want more, and you’re willing to do something about it. The question is: are you ready to stop spreading yourself thin and start going deep?
Macro focus is a skill you can develop. And if you want help, support isn’t a luxury. It’s the lever that makes everything else work.
Until next time,
Irina Stanescu
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That distinction between climbing efficiently and leaning against the right wall is painful but accurate.
I think this is why so many of us in engineering struggle to move from "Senior" to "Staff" or Management. We are addicted to the "micro" because it's loud and immediate.
I'll admit, the Lag Time you mentioned is still my personal weakness. When I set a macro strategy and the feedback loop is six months long, I get anxious. I have a bad habit of trying to invent micro tasks just to get that dopamine hit of feeling productive, even if it's just busywork that distracts from the real goal.
It takes a massive amount of discipline to sit on your hands and trust that the silence isn't stagnation. Thanks for the reminder.