When you jump around from task to task or person to person, you lose sight of what matters to you. You are trying to be all things to all people. This is not possible.
We all want to “be productive” and we are all productive in our own way, but we should try to be less busy and more impactful. It’s easy to work on the wrong things and fill up our time. We have to know what we value and why we value it to help harness our focus. Then we can do things that matter to us. Stop allowing yourself to be consumed with the shit pies that people dole out like they are a bakery. Don’t let them distract you from the things that you love.
We often focus on all the negative things that happened in the day. We are wired this way because our anxiety used to help us stay alive. The world has changed and we have to stop putting up with the bullshit. You can’t control other people, but you can control how you respond to them.
Instead of worrying about a snide comment from a co-worker, try learning from it instead. Pick a few things that really matter and let the other stuff just drift away. When we focus on the essential things, we can find new connections that other people don’t see and use these as leverage to make a bigger impact. We can’t do this if we worry about every little thing. You can truly harness your focus when you stop worrying about the things that don’t matter and instead focus on doing just a few things well.
It’s why the old adage of “study what you want to become” has helped so many people. If you want to be happier then focus on learning all you can about happiness. If you want to start a business then focus on reading the best business books. If you want more money then focus on learning about finances. If you want to be healthier then focus on learning as much as you can about diet and exercise. The reason many people don’t study this stuff is that they are afraid. They are afraid that they will fail and feel worse, but they are failing before they even try.
By focusing on the things that matter to you, success will come. It’s about having the confidence to take action on what you learned. When you focus on learning these things you build the confidence to make difficult choices. Then you can go back to lesson #4 because you will fail, but you’ll learn what you did wrong and try something else that could work for you.
You can read the first lesson here: The freeing Art of Refusing to Eat Shit Pie