Trying to do too much.
That’s their downfall: Running around in circles, trying to do so many things, and ending up not being good at or finishing anything.
It takes real skill to identify what’s important, and do nothing else.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO & cofounder
When you’re setting goals or clarifying your vision, what you are actually doing is selecting from an endless sea or possibilities what direction you are going to head in. You are not just deciding on one direction, but also at the same time, you are deciding against all other alternatives. The very act deciding is saying no. In fact, the origin of the word, “decide,” means to, “cut off” from the Latin combination of dē-de- and -cīdere (combining form of caedere to cut).1.
So, if you are true to your word, if you claim to commit your resources of time and effort to one task, when you do anything else, you are breaking your word or your promise. The real magic comes in choosing your target and heading in that direction and no other.
Similar concepts are, “mutually exclusive,” and “trade offs.” Unless you have an unlimited supply of time, energy, and other resources, any task you set out to do greatly affects or draws resources that may have been committed to any other task. Acknowledging that real tradeoffs exist is just intelligent. Once you acknowledge it, you can work within those parameters.
You can have your cake and eat it, too. There will, however, be times that you can work out a synergistic solution and proverbially, “have your cake and eat it, too.” Author T. Harv Eker lists this attitude as a quality of millionaires in his book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. There is a fine line between acknowledging unavoidable tradeoffs and identifying opportunities that allow you to have more. The trick is to use your intelligence to know the difference.
Time is the real limiter here. For the most part, you can’t be in two places at a time or really, truly, concentrate on two things at a time. When you say, “Yes,” to something, you are really simultaneously saying, “No.” To all the other mutually exclusive opportunities. And if you don’t get that, you suffer the consequences of actually having never said, “Yes,” to anything.
Footnotes and References
- Dictionary.com definition page for Decide https://www.dictionary.com/browse/decide
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