{"id":679020,"date":"2026-09-08T19:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/679020\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T19:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:01:11","slug":"kevin-oleary-says-steve-jobs-taught-him-to-focus-on-3-things-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/679020\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin O’Leary says Steve Jobs taught him to focus on 3 things a day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professionals can get bogged down by a continuous stream of emails, notifications, and meetings. But investing icon Kevin O\u2019Leary says late Apple<\/a> cofounder Steve Jobs taught him a simple formula to make the most of his days: focusing on what actually matters and drowning out the chaos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the day, you only need to get three things done,\u201d O\u2019Leary recently said on the<\/a> Build or Break podcast with Daniel Lubetzky. \u201cThey\u2019re important each day\u2014not the big vision. Just three things done. You have to do those first. Anything that stops you from getting the three things done is noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary says the best of the best in business share one quality in common. They can tune out the \u201cnoise\u201d of their personal lives\u2014like watercooler small talk, or phone calls from aunts\u2014and hone in on the \u201csignal\u201d of what actually needs to get done straight away. Mr. Wonderful says his former business partner Jobs had the perfect signal-to-noise ratio of 80:20. It may have made him \u201cextremely difficult to work with,\u201d O\u2019Leary explains, but points to what he\u2019s accomplished with a \u201ctough\u201d and \u201cbrutal\u201d leadership style.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other entrepreneurs can muffle the static of life and zero in on what actually matters. The 72-year-old Canadian businessman also says he\u2019s seen Elon Musk\u2019s intense \u201csignal\u201d personality up close at entrepreneur Mark Burnett\u2019s Shark Tank Christmas parties. O\u2019Leary recounted that if the Tesla<\/a> founder didn\u2019t find value in a conversation, he would simply walk away from the group. It might be a faux pas in the grand scheme of social norms, but it plays out well in the world of business. O\u2019Leary knows the mindset all too well; the successful investor is known both for his brutal honesty and financial wins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Musk] just doesn\u2019t want to waste his time, and look at what he\u2019s achieved,\u201d O\u2019Leary continued. \u201cThis idea of signal to noise is going to make you a difficult person, and it has. That\u2019s why I have so many critics\u2026I don\u2019t care, because it\u2019s noise. It just doesn\u2019t matter to me. And so if it doesn\u2019t matter to me, why should I put any energy into it at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary discovered the \u2018founders mindset\u2019 while working with Jobs in the 1990s<\/p>\n

For O\u2019Leary, the lesson Jobs taught him went beyond simply getting more done. He also developed a \u201cfounder\u2019s mindset\u201d to cut through the noise\u2014knowing what deserves your attention and having the discipline to shut out everything else.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, SoftKey Software Products\u2014later named The Learning Company\u2014spearheaded the development of Apple\u2019s educational software. O\u2019Leary suggested that Jobs hear input from students and teachers about what they wanted from the program. But Jobs had none of it, saying their opinions didn\u2019t matter and that the games would be most successful if they followed the Apple cofounder\u2019s lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary said Jobs led with<\/a> a brutal leadership persona, but respected how he kept his eye on the ball. The Shark Tank investor has also managed to reach that 80:20 dynamic, striking a balance between business and hobbies like watch and guitar collecting to stay dynamic. Others, like Musk, let signal dominate the space where noise creates harmony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had to work on it, because I didn\u2019t even know that was important till I went through my whole thing with Jobs way back in the early 90s,\u201d O\u2019Leary told Fortune<\/a> last year. \u201cBut I also deal with it in every aspect of what I\u2019m doing\u2026[If] business is biting, you focus on making money or losing money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without cultivating that 80:20 founder\u2019s mindset, O\u2019Leary\u2019s entrepreneurial track record could have looked a whole lot different. He\u2019s had massive entrepreneurial success, founding SoftKey Software Products in the basement of his Toronto pad in 1983, and later selling the company to Mattel<\/a> for $3.7 billion in 1999. He has since built a reputation as a prolific investor, backing dozens of companies like Groove Book, Blueland, and Basepaws. And most notably, he\u2019s held his role as no-nonsense Shark Tank investor \u201cMr. Wonderful\u201d for 17 seasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary may come across as prickly to some, but he believes that his haters have turned out to be great motivators<\/a>. With over 40 years of skin in the game, O\u2019Leary isn\u2019t easily deterred by a snide comment or occasional failure; he\u2019s practiced being able to tune out the \u201cnoise\u201d of critics and external pressures, and focus on the three most important things for the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fairly lucky. I\u2019ve made lots of mistakes in investing, but I\u2019ve also had some extraordinary outcomes\u2026I\u2019m not scared to fail,\u201d O\u2019Leary told Fortune<\/a>. \u201cI never bet the farm on any one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professionals can get bogged down by a continuous stream of emails, notifications, and meetings. But investing icon Kevin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[3500,311,79,5500,434,18,1647,6151,236,19,11427,17,1946,306,58341,2841,753,1298,2795],"class_list":["post-679020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-advice","tag-apple","tag-business","tag-career-advice","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-elon-musk","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-investors","tag-ireland","tag-leadership","tag-millionaires","tag-shark-tank","tag-steve-jobs","tag-tech","tag-tesla","tag-workers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117236969404906343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}