Earlier this year I read a great book – Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown. And it clarified my thoughts on an idea that has been dancing around the edges of my mind.
I like to do many things. In varsity, I did so many different things…taught dance school, involved in church activities, led cell group, designed on the side, attended classes, had a social life, etc, etc.
I liked doing many things because I liked the rush of being busy and trying to cram a thousand things into an impossible space of time.
Over time, some things fell away and I became more focused. My life was centred around designing and trying to make a living from that. For the past few years, I have been very undisciplined with my work. I would take on as many jobs as came my way, while trying to work on my personal ideas and projects. The price of this indiscipline was I was always frantic and at the mercy of my clients, and email. I burned out regularly as evidenced by my blog posts around mid year, every year. I never had the chance to slow percolate ideas and projects the way I really wanted to.
Last year however, I had the experience of being able to work on one project for months, building it from the ground up and designing multiple collateral for the idea. It was a nice change of pace from trying to fit 10 things into a month of time. I liked it, the pace of work was both challenging and easier. Challenging because it takes discipline to work in this way…pushing past resistance and fighting distraction. Easier because I didn’t feel so frantic and rushed. Better because my quality of work was higher.
As the third month of the year begins and we continue to plow through, I want to make great impact this year. I recognize that that means working on the right things. But you can only know what the right things are if you know what you truly want and what is important to you. Then you can identify what paths of action would take you there. You can sacrifice short term gain for the long term goal, and move steadily towards your aims. But this way of doing things is not always natural and is something we must develop a discipline in. You have to decide where your greatest level of contribution is, and where the greatest need is and where the two intersect. Eventually, you can do less and achieve a lot more, because the essential few things have a great pay off.
Having many options and opportunities is a blessing and a curse. Its great to be able to explore all these possibilities, but at some point, you have to close off some doors and focus on the essential few. Otherwise, your energy will be scattered in too many directions and you will not make any impact.
Focus on the essential few.
Great article. I can so relate to how you have gotten to that point. We seem to find that satisfaction comes from how busy we are or the illusion of how busy we are. Think of being a master class juggler, the crowd loves you for your performance but you are the one straining to keep the act up.
As the classic saying goes, Jack of all Trades, Master of None… So does the same principle apply to what you focus on in life. You can’t have time, concentration, effort and energy for everything.
Focus on the essential few
Yeah. You gotta keep your ego in check, as much as we like to flatter ourselves and think we can do it all, truth is we can’t. Rather pick something to focus on and give it your all.
Hi Otoabasi,
Reading this piece for the first time, have to say I’m impressed and inspired by your last paragraph ‘Your energy will be scattered in too many directions and you will not make any impact’ So often we think being able to do a lot, and taking on many different projects be it in our personal lives or business we are growing and gaining and benefiting when in true essence we are accomplishing very little and wonder why we are not where we envisioned ourselves to be after a period of time; complaining about how much we’d done with minimal results.
If theres one thing I’ve learned it’s that focus your energy on your crucial goals which will enable you to make a mark, so much so that everything else will follow and there won’t be a need for you to jump through hoops to chase dreams that have already outrun you.
Don’t know if any of that makes sense but yeah, that’s where my thinking lead me after reading this.
Xx Codi
Hey Codi, one way to look at it would be to prioritise your goals and projects and decide which one must absolutely happen and focus on that. So figure out which goal is most important or which goal when achieved would make it easier to pivot to the other goals afterwards.