Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The title of this post is taken from the poem The Summer’s Day, by Mary Oliver. 

How do we know what to focus on? Day to day, week to week, hour to hour?  The tough thing about this is that it’s taught in school as
 “Here, I know what you should focus on, I am the teacher.” Or “This is the Curriculum.”  This is good for certain purposes.

I haven’t really found it useful as a modus operandi in my daily life as a working professional though.  Not when it comes to getting things done and what to do with my one wild and precious life.   

The key problem is that if you bring the same attitude to work as you do to school it’s essentially: Do what the boss says and you will move forward.  

Now, this is true. To an extent.  Then you reach a point where in daily work, well you don’t actually know what to do because a good boss also wants you to think for yourself and be creative. That’s as it should be.  In the larger picture of your life as you gain more freedom of time and perhaps remote work, you also gain more decision making power over what you focus on, what you do, and of course how you do it.

So how do we know what to focus on and work on?

Having read the Four Hour Work Week, the The One Thing and Essentialism. I can tell you this, a great failing for me has been in not knowing how to answer the questions posed in these books on a consistent basis. On top of that, the answer to this big question should not come as a reaction to what you are currently dealing with. Meaning, I spent many years making decisions in hopes of earning lots of money, because I had spent many years growing up poor and worrying about money.  

I wasn’t necessarily trained to answer my own questions-to think creatively.  For many adults there is a re-learning of our creativity, and also of deciding what matters. 

Sometimes you need to spend some time asking yourself on the larger scale of life: What matters to me?

This is good for helping steer the freight liner that is your life over time.  it can also inform more day to day week to week decision making. 

If for example you decide that family comes first, this is going to change how you look at work. 

Health definitely is near the top of my personal list, and informs many decisions about what I eat and how I eat. 

Getting back to work/creativity, and what you work on though. 

How do you know or figure out what to work on?

Well, sometimes you have to spend some time reflecting, writing, thinking, bouncing ideas off people and beyond. 

This is something I don’t know every second of the day, and is one reason I’m putting it into blog form-because as I’ve said, I write this blog to discover what I think.

As you read this you are reading an attempt on my part to really finally answer this question with clarity. 

Right now for me, I have my main job and within that there are many directions I could take. 

One framing question I ask often is “What will be the highest leverage?” or “highest impact action?”

Be prepared to dislike the answer.  For example, in my job that involves planning and coordinating experiences I am in a leadership role, so the highest leverage for me in many areas is to train and empower those I work with-as they are the ones who are directly doing that work.

This involves a fair amount of meetings.   I do not like this answer.  A quick disclaimer: I really enjoy working with the people I work with, they are thoughtful, driven smart likeable people - I just dont’ think meetings are generally a great use of time. 

This is my greatest leverage - at least for now: to meet with, empower, mentor and activate my team.  So it is. 

There is a lot of creativity that can go into how this is done, and perhaps some amount of streamlining.  This is one of the highest leverage activities. 

Now within the groups of people you work with, I guarantee there are those who will take less chasing, and are proactive.  If given the choice, work with these people.  Spend little time chasing if you can. Sometimes you just have to chase someone down and see what’s up. 

Another answer to the question of what do I work on?  Well since a lot of my job involves working with others towards our mission, one answer to “what do I work on?” is rapport, presence and/or charisma.  This is a skill - it enables me to empower others to do their work. 

I find it nearly impossible to achieve this without some level of charisma, presence and rapport.

So, this is something to work on-and it’s something that will always be valuable. 


What else to work on?  Of course this largely depends on what you are trying to do.

One phrasing - I think Tim Ferriss mentions this is:

What is one thing that if I do it will render everything else easier or unnecessary?

This question.  Damn this goddamn question.

I find this question to be somewhat overwhelming because it has so many possible answers.

I think a very subtle but important tweak is to add the project or task you are working on:

so “What is one thing that if I do it will render everything else easier or unnecessary?”

becomes

“To finish this specific video what is one thing that I can do that  will render everything else easier or unnecessary?”

On the specific video I’m working on today...the answer is...actually to decide that it really has a clear deadline - because I have been overthinking this specific video for two weeks now and it’s been sucking a lot of my energy. 

So. I’m making it due by close of business tomorrow. The answers will of course vary.

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On the whole, I think that one of the things that really hinders someone like me is this:

I love to learn - and therefore I attempt to do it all myself.  Which is impossible.

When I set out to create my first podcast, I told myself I would outsource parts of it.  I have definitely not yet succeeded in doing this!  

The truth is I wanted to learn the process. This is not the problem.  The challenge is two fold:

1. Cataloguing processes
   
2. Paying for someone else to do those processes
   

I feel too lazy to write down the steps...but there’s not much reward for me in getting someone else to do it--except the high high value in learning to outsource.

Perhaps though, someone else has already catalogued these processes (they have).

Paying someone else to do it...well that’s actually another story for another day!

When it comes to deciding what to work on people will generally write about starting at the highest level and ask you “What’s your life’s vision!?”  Then they will make an arch with their hand and a bright shimmering light will appear and turn into a rainbow and  the words “Life’s Vision” will appear. At which point you will stop reading because you’re probably just trying to figure out how to get through the week, or do things more efficiently, or spend less time deliberating.

So this would be a confusion of priorities.  Sure having a big vision is important, but I haven't found that question very useful at least not yet. 

I think in deciding what to focus on, two important things come to mind: Priorities, and saying no.

Priorities generally can be done by making a simple list for your day/week, and then rearranging them in order.  The next step might be to say: can I just not do 10 of these 20 things with no adverse consequences?  The answer may surprise you.  At any given moment there are plenty of things you are not doing already, so a few more will likely make it onto your list because your brain thinks they need to be there-they may not.

Saying no. More on this to come, but saying no begins with yourself: do you say no to a great idea so you can do the work you’re doing already?  Can you say “No, that’s not important right now”?   Saying no to things keeps your path clear. How to know what to say no to is really up to you. You’ll need to train yourself to have some rules about what to say no to--especially since it’s easy to fool yourself into staying in your comfort zone.

So, as far as knowing what to work on, for now, I don’t have a concise answer, but looking above I’ve got some answers.