A couple of years ago, my boss told me “Fred, you should focus more, and stop doing a million things”. At that time, I was working for him, blogging, having an excessive usage of social media, volunteering in the scout with two important positions managing people, organizing a festival as managing the volunteers, doing a video podcast, and more! My inner Fred thought he was wrong: what’s the problem with doing multiple things I’m enjoying… As I’m a bit older now, and probably less stupid, I totally get what he told me.
What he really told me at that time is that I wasn’t able to be truly good at something if I was focusing on many things at once: I was just average, in everything, because I didn’t have time to perfect my art. He was right! It was something really hard for me to be understood at that time, and still hard to acknowledge even today: I’m a man of passion, and trust me, I have a lot of those. I also have many project’s ideas, and I like to discover new things. On top of that, too often, people approach me to help or to participate in nice projects. At one point in my life, I was trying to make a reality every project I had in mind, or to dedicate time to every new passion I was discovering. At that end: I was average or doing an average job on everything.
Today, I decided to focus on three things: my family/friends, my job, and my blog. I tried to avoid other projects, as I want to succeed, and dedicate time on these three spheres on my life. Does that mean I’m not doing anything else? Of course not! I like to watch movies, read books, go to the gym (ok I don’t like it, but I need to do it!), and I’ll take a photography course in January to finally be able to take nice pictures. I’m just learning to say to no to people, but also to myself about new projects. That as well mean that I need to prioritize: what make more sense for me, or what is the more exciting. It’s more complex than it seems, but at the end, you’ll see the benefit: I’m already seeing it!
For me, my life now is all about focusing, and I think you should too… At the end, we only have a finite number of time during our life: is all the candies really worth eating?
