What do you do when you have so many interests you don’t know where to begin? You want to pursue them all, but you find yourself being pulled in a dozen different directions and you’re just not getting anything done.
In her book, Refuse to Choose, author and career coach Barbara Sher notes that trying to decide which of your interests to pursue is like trying to decide which of your children to feed.
True, but there’s a difference between feeding your children and turning them into screaming, demanding, merciless little three-horned monsters. And when it comes to our interests, I think we often do the latter, because we have a tendency to turn every interest into a project. Then one day we wake up and discover we have three dozen projects, a throbbing headache, and a giant, scarlet L tattooed on our chest.
We’re kind of like Wile E. Coyote plotting a batch of schemes to capture the road runner, only we’re trying to catch an entire flock. In our minds, we’re going to become ninja like project managers, part productivity experts, part zen warriors, part circus jugglers.
It’s not enough to explore the joys of drawing. We have to implement a drawing program. We don’t just read up on something that’s grabbed our attention. We go into full-blown research mode. We stack project on top of project and when they start tumbling down, we wonder why.
But returning to the idea of interests being like offspring, anyone who’s raised children knows it’s not unusual for one of them to need more attention than the others at any given moment. They scrape their knee, they have a big test coming up, they’re going through puberty.
Your interests are no different. It’s very likely, for the time being, that one of them needs more attention than the rest. It’s the one standing by your side, tugging on your shirt sleeve, and asking for your help with an important project. In my case, it’s the one asking me to write a book.
The rest of your interests may not need that much attention. They might be perfectly satisfied with an occasional trip to the playground.
The way I’ve come to handle this is to choose one big, hairy project and work on it first thing every day. That’s how I’m writing my book.
And I’m still entertaining my other interests; they’re the rewards for a morning well spent, but when I’m spending time with them, I ditch the project mindset. We’re just hanging out together, horsing around, having fun.
I guess I’m a one-big-project-at-a-time kind of guy. Anytime I forget this, things seem to unravel.
I don’t know how many projects you can juggle, but I’d suggest trying to focus on the most important one for a period each day, downsizing the others until the big one’s finished, and ditching the project mindset altogether for your interests that don’t really require it.
Instead of constantly being in project mode, take a trip now and then to the playground. I hear the monkey bars are fun.
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Once again, I think you’re reading my mind. Thanks for this post. Your timing couldn’t be better.
No, I was only reading my own mind. We just share the same issues. :O)
Wow – I’ve never thought of it that way. I do tend to make every interest a project – and work it until I’ve beat every bit of joy out of it. Thanks for the insight.
I have to echo darrah. I’m always pulling myself in a thousand different directions. I’ve only recently discovered the wonders of uni-tasking (single-tasking? What’s the correct phrase here) and old habits die hard.
Uni-tasking. I like it.
Exactly!
This morning I woke up, opened up my laptop, and was confronted with 10 draft articles staring at me on my desktop. I felt so overwhelmed by this, that I decided to toss 9 articles in a separate folder and finish the one article I would enjoy writing about most. That is now the only article on my desktop.
Without the other 9 screaming for attention, I found it a lot easier to focus on the subject of my article. I didn’t write more today than I do on any other day, but the decision to stick to that one subject, affected the quality of the writing in a very positive way.
Great insight, Bert. Thanks.
Hi Ken,
First time to visit your blog. I agree that you should work on your biggest or most difficult task in the morning. It’s like Brian Tracy wrote in his book, “Eat that Frog.” He extends this to doing the task you dislike the least, but your idea applies too.
Thanks for the great post.
I’m glad you found your way here, Gordie. Luckily, I don’t have any frogs to deal with at the moment.
Great advice, Ken! I’ve found it’s helped me to focus on the Bottom-line Bookclub as my main project and the other ideas I have are idling or meandering along at a slow pace – I dip into them every so often, but I’m not driving them hard. In a few month’s time I’m looking forward to creating the space to focus on one of those other ideas as my main project.
Anything you’re coming up with will surely be worth the wait.
I swear you wrote this article just for me. The funny thing is, I was just thinking about this prior to reading your post! I have so many creative endeavors I want to explore all the time. I know this stems from having multiple talents. I do treasure each of these talents but I don’t think I am doing any of them justice if I spend more time jumping from project to project rather than completing them.
The thing that’s been working for me is not only thinking about how exciting it is to actually be completing something, but also about how I’ll be able to do it all over again when I’m finished.
I looooove this post, Ken! Our conversation about this has given me an intense sense of focus about my “project” AND it’s put the fun back in the playground. I was missing both of these before! You are da bomb – mwah! Thank you, thank you.
Mwah right back at ya.
hmmm — guess that means i have to throw away my gantt chart huh? (okay old school here – don’t use those newfangled software for project management simply because i like my handwriting). i do have a tendency to go OC when i’m interested in something — then declare “It’s soooo tedious!” after a few weeks or months. thanks! your words are such a big help.
I like old school, and I envy your satisfaction with your handwriting.
This reminds me a bit of Jonathan Mead’s Copyblogger post this week called, “Kill Your Good Ideas.” http://www.copyblogger.com/kill-your-good-ideas/ He was encouraging folks to ditch the ‘good ideas’ in favor of doing what they were most passionate about.
My takeaway from these posts is that we creative types are blessed with so many good ideas, it’s impossible to follow up on them all. If we let some of them die or at least languish, then there’s more room for the most important ones.
Thanks for another great reminder!
This is brilliant. I concur!
Thank you, Jennie. I’m so glad you left a comment. I found your blog as a result and I’ve put you on my reading list.
I’m one of those multi-tasker, multi-project kind of people. That’s why I’ve also “Refuse to Choose” (and another similar book, “Renaissance Soul”) – trying to find a solution to my “ideaholism” (which incidentally, is something I blogged about recently!).
I tried to do “uni-tasking” but it doesn’t work for me. I end up too frustrated. But, having too many things in one go also doesn’t work. So, I’m finding ways to have enough projects on my plate – without getting too overwhelmed.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this matter. It’s really interesting to read how other people deal with this same problem in different ways.
When you get down to to it, there’s really no such a thing as multi-tasking. There’s simply the shifting of one’s attention from one thing to another. The trick is to find how much of this shifting you can do without failing to focus on any one thing long enough to accomplish something.
Love this. I have 5 or 10 projects in incubation at any one time, but I’m always working on just one. I’ve found that I can’t function otherwise.
There’s a difference between “working on” projects and doing them excellently and consistently. You can probably “work on” 5 projects at once, and they’re not going to turn out well, if they come together at all.
It’s great to have the reminder of why I do this. Cheers.
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