Monday Mindset: Founders need Focus
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New Year, New Us
We (Matthew and Katie) hope you were able to take some time out over the holidays! It’s important. We did that in Northumberland and Northern Ireland, respectively.
That end of December break can sometimes feels unwelcome though because there’s the worry that it breaks the momentum built up during the year. We felt that too.
However, it’s an important—and, we’d say, essential—opportunity to recalibrate and think about what truly matters in work and life.
So what’s new…?!
Well, we wanted to pick up that momentum and keep it going in 2025.
And the thing that’s helped most was getting straight back into our habit of being focused.
That habit started in Q4 of last year when we found it useful to have an ‘accountability & focus call’ every Monday morning.
What we did was jump on a call to focus and work together. We worked on the most important tasks for our respective day-jobs, but did so together so we could focus, have accountability and not get distracted.
Like all the best ideas it was a simple one — for the first few minutes we simply shared with each other what our focus would be, then we spent the rest of the hour with each other—but in silence—simply doing the work.
Doing that meant we started each week focused and with clarity and purpose for what we’d work on in the days ahead.
Those Monday calls set the tone; whether it was carving out time for deep, uninterrupted focus to tackle the challenges that would drive our work forward, or getting going on that important task we’d been avoiding.
Simple yet remarkable.
It’s been quite transformative.
So we thought; if it’s been useful to us, we reckon it’ll be useful to you too.
Introducing Founders Focus
Today we are writing to tell you about our latest initiative for the community, ‘Founders Focus’.
Founders Focus is a membership program from 9others; a space for you to carve out time to work on the hard things that really matter.
If you join us this is what you will get:
Your weekly focus & deep work hour to get things done in 50 minutes.
A weekly Google Meet session each Monday at 10am (UK time) for all members.
Private Slack channels just for members of Founders Focus.
The chance to open up opportunities from the community you’ll be part of.
The start of a strong habit right at the beginning of each week.
Format — how it works
First 5 minutes: Matthew and Katie will welcome you and open the session. You share in the chat what you will be working on.
Middle 50 minutes: Focus! Do the work!
Last 5 minutes: Did you do it? More to do? Tell us in the chat.
Continue the work: Discuss more and help each other in the Private Slack Channels.
We’ll be there too and we hope you’ll join us — the benefits of that focused hour on a Monday morning have been huge for us.
You can read more here, where we have more information, FAQs and links to sign up as either a monthly or annual member.
Who’s this for?
We think Founder Focus is ideal for Solo Founders, Freelancers and Remote Workers and could be super useful for Founders with a Remote Team, Side Hustlers and Fractional CxOs.
We’ve been trialing this with a few of you and we’re grateful to those folks for the feedback, challenges and sign-ups.
That’s given us the confidence to provide this to the rest of the community so if you would like to join us please click here to be one of our early members.
See you there.
Upcoming meals with 9others
The in-person meals with 9others continue of course — the meals are your chance to come together, share a challenge and help each other out.
If you’d like to host in your city please email matthew@9others.com
Wednesday 29th January — London — details and signup here.
Tuesday 4th February — Manchester — details and signup here.
Wednesday 19th February — London — details and signup here.