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:
Exploratory Mode
Determine What Isn’t Working
Determine What Is Working
Combining Passion With Strengths
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:
got bored doing it
got distracted by shiny object syndrome
didn’t recognize the success I was initially having
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.
WhatWorks_Web_WIP
4. Combining Passion With Strengths
We are all good at something, even though many of you tell yourself you’re not.
I run into so many people that tell me this and I always ask them:
What is it that you love to do?
What comes naturally to you?
What are your strengths?
What are you good at?
Analyze your strengths and match that with passion.
I personally feel that the key to being successful at doing what you love relies on:
finding what you love to do and
matching that with something that is producing results
In vice versa, you will lose focus and drain your energy if you force yourself to do something that works that you don’t have a passion for.
You’re setting yourself up for failure and allowing room for distractions, getting bored or burnt out. Hence the case with me and Daydreamin’ Clothing.
This all originates to your What and Why.
What do you want to do and why do you want to do it?
What are you good at and why does it matter?
This leads to your How. How are you going to make this happen?
We do this by doing more of what works.
Creating illustrative lettering and combining it with elements of motivational coaching sounded like it could be a possibility the more I thought about it.
It covered my want and my why. How I was going to do it was by curating solely what I shared and defining the box that I was going to be put in as I produced content for a niche audience.
This new plan of action was built off a foundation of principles along with what I had a passion for. It shapes my content that is focused on self-development by delivering value to others through engaging writing and artwork.
I’m betting all my chips on this direction in life as my internal compass tells me this is where I need to go.
5. Go All In
Save yourself from guessing what you should do next in life.
Once you meet the criteria of meshing strengths and passions while combining it with what works, it’s time to channel all of your efforts into a single goal.
It’s easy to keep bouncing from one thing to the next. You hope luck is on your side so you can stumble into something that will bring you immediate success without having to invest the hours to earn it.
It’s more difficult to put all your energy, focus and time into pursuing one direction. The thought of putting all your attention into mastering one thing may not sound appealing to you, but tell me one successful person who is known for being an expert at a ton of things all at once?
These prolific people are well-known because they were an expert at one thing at a time:
Bob Ross was known for painting
Kurt Cobain was known for song writing
Kobe Bryant is known for basketball
Beethoven was known for writing music
Will Smith is known for his acting (he quit rapping and did more of what works)
You could make an argument that they were really good at other things. However, they built their reputation by mastering their craft in a specific field and then pursued secondary passions in their down time.
Once you’ve mastered something and have reached a level of the highest success, you can overlap and begin to take on something else.
However, since I have not reached that level of mastery and I’m assuming you haven’t either, I’m going to save that topic for further down the road when I can deliver value from experience.
Stop Wasting Your Time
Quit investing your time and efforts into something that isn’t working. Perseverance is a quality trait to have, but doing the same thing over and over expecting to get different results is leading to defeat.
Capitalize on what works.
Key Takeaways
You can’t juggle many things and expect to be taken seriously
You have the freedom to explore different areas until you find something that works
Pinpoint where you’re spending wasted energy into something that isn’t working
If you can’t track measurable progression or see visible growth, it’s time to ditch it
Money should never be the center of your goals
Identify what has worked by taking an objective approach
Combine your strengths with your passions
Tie your gift into finding self-fulfillment and providing value to others
Create a plan of action and focus all your efforts into it
Master one thing at a time
It was brought to my attention that having a call to action was great and all at the end of each post, but how many of you are are inspired for a moment and let that feeling fizzle away? I don't want it to be me telling you what to do each week. I want it to be you truly asking yourself and finding out the answer.
I want to inspire immediate action over the temporary, fuzzy feelings you may get while you read this.
You’re in a position where you can pretend that you can accomplish everything and not stretch yourself too thin. Or you can choose to accept your limitations and acknowledge you can’t physically accomplish everything.
This week I challenge you to reflect on that one thing you do that is working.
What is that one thing that you should be doing more of?
What if I told you that success is down the path of doing more of what works and you can take this path right now? Focus this week on finding that one thing, you can’t do it all!
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