You Are Doing Too Much: Focus on One Thing

Do More of What Works

I used to think the road to success meant I needed to be good at everything.

Is it safe to assume you may have this problem too?

It’s a simple question, do you want to be above average at a lot of things or do you want to be considered an expert in your niche?

Most of us are trying to take on more than we are physically and mentally capable of. We attempt to juggle multiple things at once while distributing our focus amongst these equally.

And we wonder why we aren’t seeing results?

If you find yourself in this position, recognize that you are stretching yourself too thin and there are better options.

You have the ability to identify what is working so you can take advantage by doing more of it. Narrowing your focus will lead you to more opportunities that you can apply focus to that are fulfilling yet still deliver value to others.

In this post, I break down 5 stages of what has helped me determine what is working and what I need to do more of:

1. Exploratory Mode

2. Determine What Isn’t Working

3. Determine What Is Working

4. Combining Passion With Strengths

5. Going All In

I believe in these steps and am confident they will guide you as well.

1. Exploratory Mode

If you’re unsure of what you want to do in life or can’t seem to figure out what has been working, go explore.

There may be a lot of things that pique your interest and you want to avoid pigeonholing yourself and that’s totally fine.

You have full permission to go into exploratory mode.

Exploratory mode is great for people who don’t have a concrete direction in life and realize they want to break away from the normal, expected routine society has engrained in us. It’s okay to start dipping your toes into different areas.

Maybe you are interested in crafting, photography, painting, jewelry, cooking, or fashion. It’s natural to want to branch off and try these new things. It’s about slowly overlapping from your full-time gig which is covering bills so you can discover what is working for you and what isn’t.

I’ve dabbled in so many creative things from college till now; ceramics, pottery, t-shirt designs, graphic design, tattoo design, hand lettering, etc. As I bounced around between creative ventures, I was also trying to become a personal trainer and a football coach. I thoroughly enjoyed helping people reach their goals.

I was the definition of being a jack-of-all-trades. I was becoming fairly decent at all of them but nothing was sticking. Some of these things I put a lot of effort into for a few years and wasn’t seeing measurable results or finding self-fulfillment.

After all my experimenting, it dawned on me that something wasn’t right. I wasn’t making progress or was in an endless cycle of mediocrity and unhappiness. I had to figure out what wasn’t working.

2. Determine What Isn’t Working

We have a tendency to start something until we see a glimpse of success. We then drop it and transition to the next possible big thing or we try to keep taking on more so we can be “diversified and knowledgeable” of many things.

We also worry too much what other people think of us that we never start or we tailor our work towards what we think people will like. I will actually be covering this more in depth in next weeks topic.

Are you guilty of either of these? Chances are you most likely fall into one of these buckets. Maybe even both.

I know from my experiences that I was trying to be a all-star and had my hands on everything possible. I figured the more things I could be good at, the more opportunities would arise which meant more money.

Sadly, making money was the main focus of it all.

With attempting to be good at everything, I started to worry too much what people thought of me and I wanted to create things to please them. I lived for affirmation. This resulted in me diverting from my original style and creating work that wasn’t true to my roots.

It was all fake and none of it was working. If anything, I was looking like a fool trying to juggle so many things at once and letting other peoples opinions dictate what I created.

It took me a long time to figure out this wasn’t the right path. I was doing too much and I needed to determine what was working and detach myself from what wasn’t.

3. Determine What Is Working

Most of you are probably asking, “So how do I know if something has been working?”

If you have analytics to tap into, this will be easier, otherwise you can reflect from an objective look:

• What has shown the best results?

• What has gotten the most engagement?

• What has led to the most clients?

• What has generated the most sales?

• What has made you feel the most fulfilled?

Do any of these apply to you? What has worked and why did you stop doing it?

I know for me, the reason I stopped doing things that worked was because I:

Chances are there was something that was delivering results that was going on right under your nose.

Speaking from experience, my handmade artwork always seemed to resonate the most with people.

I even remember drawing this sick dragon in kindergarten with neon orange and blue crayons. It pretty much blew everyones mind. Subconsciously I think that was the day I got hooked on words of affirmation as I was always creating since.

Over the years, I grew bored with drawing as I generally kept most of it to myself. I didn’t feel like I was making progress even though you could see the range of growth looking at my sketchbook collection.

I eventually got caught up in trying to run a clothing line and designing t-shirts for almost 5 years. We called it Daydreamin’ Clothing Company LLC. We actually saw tremendous growth each year but it wasn’t where my true passion resided.

This was definitely a shiny object as I stopped working by hand, however our mission and my art was built on the foundation on bringing encouragement to people.

Other than drawing, the other quality that has always come naturally to me was encouraging people. I realize now why I tried to get into coaching and personal training people because I had a passion for motivating people to achieve results whether it was in the gym or on the football field. These results would overlap into their every day lives.

Both creating hand made art and coaching people had been working for me. I needed to do more but I created a dichotomy in which I needed to pick one route or the other. I couldn’t do both.

It wasn’t until this last year where I started to understand that I could combine both of these passions which just happened to be my strengths.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3wUEyAH