Focus

I'm coming to the conclusion that the predominant reason you aren't where you want to be in life is due to lack of focus. And maybe that's not your fault. But it can still be the cause of a lack of progress toward a goal. The troubling thing is that there are TONS of great reasons (or excuses 😉) as to why you're not able to focus on things that move you toward your goals. Bills, childcare obligations, cooking, cleaning, home improvement. You name it, you probably have to do it. But it's distracting you from your goals.

And I get it, we can't avoid some of those things. If your heat goes out in the dead of winter, you've got to get it fixed. But you are in control of your other distractions. For many of us, these are things like social media or Netflix consumption. I do my fair share of participating in those time sinks. But limiting these types of activities is imperative to making progress in life. After all, most of the successful people you see in life are the result of optimizing toward a select few skills. In other words, they know how to say NO to things. Learning how to say NO is unbelievably important. The only finite resource we have in life is time. If you let other things monopolize this time, you'll never get it back.

One of the best ways I've learned how to say NO to things is to put together a list of everything I want/need to do and put a prioritization next to it. The easiest way to do this is to take a loose leaf sheet of paper and begin to write what comes to mind. If you choose wide-ruled paper, you'll have 26 opportunities; college-ruled comes with a slick 31 lines. Begin writing your short-term tasks. Ideally you won't fill the 26 or 31 lines with these tasks. These tend to be the 'must do' items. From there, fill in the 'wants'. These could be things like 'learn how to cook' or 'learn a new language'. Ignoring the 'must do' items, put a number next to each of the 'wants'. These longer-term items are things that generally take more time to plan and act upon.

Using this process, I've narrowed in on the few things that are most important to me, right now, to strive toward. I am constantly intrigued by new and exciting areas of life, but I now know to be truly great at something requires the diligence to say NO to a lot of the other fruit life has to offer. I'm still working on this every day, but I'll keep updating you on this blog with how this focus progresses.