In today’s culture, most people know how to avoid big vices. But when there are so many opportunities to make an impact, we can’t decide which one to focus on. We don’t want to say “no” to any of them, so we dabble in them all. The result? We become ineffective by spreading our energy over a lot of good things.
Suppose I wanted to make my friend Will ineffective. Which of these would be the best way to do that?
- I could get him involved in a serious vice like gambling or drugs.
- I could give him twenty different opportunities, all of which were interesting to him and promised to make him successful.
The first sounds obvious because it could ruin his life and his relationships.
The second is the most dangerous because it’s all good stuff.
Does this apply to me?
I wrote that paragraph you just read yesterday. But this morning, it became personal.
My wife and I had just gotten up, and she asked me how I slept. “Rough,” I said. “I spent the whole night dreaming about details of all my different commitments – and those always seem worse in the middle of the night.” I wasn’t refreshed, but anxious.
She didn’t know that I had written those words yesterday, but she said basically the same thing:
“You simply can’t do everything you have on your plate,” she said. “You have a demanding full-time job, plus your writing, plus the project you’re working on in our backyard, plus travel commitments, plus family relationships, plus a whole bunch of little stuff.”
“So, what’s the solution?” I asked. She’s amazingly insightful, and I’ve learned to listen to her perspective.
“I don’t know,” she responded. “But it’s your reality right now. You just don’t have time to do it all.”
I was hoping for a quick solution – maybe a pill I could take to solve it. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s even more challenging because I’ve spent the last 30 years teaching people how to make choices that will give them control of their time and energy. I’ve specialized in time and life management, teaching seminars about personal effectiveness. I’m supposed to be the expert. I’ve helped thousands of people, and they’ve found freedom from the tyranny of the urgent.
But I’m not immune – and neither are you.
If we’re not vigilant, we become the plumber with leaky pipes at home, or the mechanic whose car doesn’t run, or the doctor with poor personal health habits.
We have to keep paying attention. Otherwise, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics takes over – which says that a moving car will slow down over time if you don’t keep your foot on the gas. If you don’t take control of your schedule, your schedule will take control of you.
It’s a different world
When I started teaching time management back in the ‘80’s, the whole focus was on “how to get it all done.” We carried paper planners and made daily to-do lists, prioritizing each item and working on the important things first.
It’s still true today, but the lists have become overwhelming. It’s not about getting it all done anymore, because we simply can’t do everything that’s in front of us.
It’s about choosing which things to do.
That’s tough because all of them seem good and essential.
It’s even worse for people who want to make an impact in the world. They believe that the more good things they do, the more of an impact they’ll have, right? So they’re driven to do it all. But in the process, they end up being ineffective.
Why? Because they’ve lost their focus and diluted their impact. The sharper their focus, the greater their impact.
If someone throws a ball at us, our natural tendency is to catch it. But if they throw 100 balls at us, our tendency is to “duck and cover” to protect ourselves. We don’t catch any of them.
Confucius said it well: “Person who chases two rabbits catches neither.”
Less is more
It seems counterintuitive – but the key to making an impact is to do less, not more. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, most of us try to work harder and be more disciplined. But if we haven’t triaged our priorities, we’ll never dig out from the bottomless, never-ending pile of tasks.
One of my favorite books is Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. Through his personal experience, he chronicles the massive growth in the results his team achieved by simply cutting down the number of goals they were focusing on. They started with about a dozen – then cut them in half. Then they narrowed it down to three. Each time they narrowed the focus, the greater the results they saw.
Finally, they picked a single goal. It was the one that if they achieved it, everything else would pale in comparison.
The results multiplied exponentially.
Keller says, “Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.”
It goes back to the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of your results (impact) come from 20% of your activities. Or as Keller says, “A majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.”
Try this experiment
When I look at my to-do list, I see a ton of things that I’d really like to do – and they all seem to be things that would make an impact. But if I’m honest, I realize that they just aren’t going to happen. As long as they’re sitting on my list, it makes me feel guilty that I haven’t gotten to them. No matter how many things I do in a day, that list is yelling at me: “Yeah, you did those things. But look how many more things are left, buddy.”
Someone said, “When you die, there will be things on your to-do list that you didn’t finish. Make sure you do the important ones.”
How do you determine which ones are the most important? Try this simple exercise. It will have more meaning to you if you actually take the steps (instead of just thinking through this):
Write down the five things that are most important to you in your life, each one on a separate yellow stickie. Keep the categories fairly broad, such as family, work, health, etc.
Each stickie represents a suitcase. You’re on a 4-engine airplane, and you have those suitcases with you (ignore the baggage limits).
Suddenly, the plane lurches to one side, then recovers. The pilot says, “We just lost one of our engines. We’ll be able to land, but only if we reduce the weight on the plane. Everyone has to toss one of their suitcases off the plane. If you don’t, the plane will crash.”
Which suitcase would you toss? Crumple up the sticky and throw it away.
Fifteen minutes later, the plane lurches again. “We’ve lost another engine,” the pilot says. “We’ll be OK if we reduce the weight again. Everyone needs to toss another suitcase.”
Throw another stickie away.
It happens a third time, then a fourth. Toss two more stickies.
You’ll land safely if you only have one suitcase left. Which one will it be?
You’ve just identified your #1 priority. If that one doesn’t happen, all the others won’t matter.
It’s where you’ll make your biggest impact.
This won’t automatically and immediately solve the issue of being overwhelmed. Your other priorities still need to be done (and we’ll talk about that in future articles). It just puts everything else in perspective as you’re making choices about your activities.
Goethe said, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
I love that. Making it a reality is the challenge, right?
Start the journey
If you’re reading this, you’re someone who wants to make a difference. You’re not satisfied with the status quo, and you want to be the exception.
That won’t happen if you’re spread too thin. When you have too many things to do, you get stressed. When you’re stressed, you start doing easy stuff that makes you feel less stressed. You’re busy, but not making progress.
It’s time to get this under control.
I still have some choices to make, and my wife and I will continue to talk through these issues. If you’re on a similar journey, I’d love to hear your perspective. Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below, and we’ll use future articles to address them.
In the meantime, go make some progress on that #1 suitcase!