Why you have to ignore almost everything to succeed

Who does much, does little — Proverb

It’s 7:00 in the morning and you turn on your computer. Today you want to write five thousand words for your new novel.

But you’re still tired, and your neck hurts. The task ahead of you seems like an impregnable mountain.

So first you get yourself a coffee and check your mails. You never know if there might be an important message waiting for you in your mailbox.

Then you look at how many books you sold yesterday at the big online merchants. After all, you need to know where you stand and how your business is going.

It occurs to you that you still wanted to read this one blog article that you bookmarked yesterday. It’s about email marketing, and you still have a lot of catching up to do in this area.

You read the article, follow all the links it contains, and take notes. You create more bookmarks and start writing the first draft for your next email campaign.

Two hours later, you still haven’t written a word for your new novel.

You are now even more tired than before, and your back hurts from sitting.

Oh, the laundry still has to be washed and hung up. Besides, you yet don’t know what you want to eat for lunch today.

Does that sound familiar to you? Then you are not alone. We all fight every day to focus our attention on the most important projects we pursue, and every time other things come in between that slow us down — at least that’s how it seems to us.

Things don’t slow you down — you do that yourself

If you take a close look at the situation described above, you will notice that each time you could have either decided differently or avoided the distraction in the first place.

You could have put the coffee on the table before you sat down at the computer. You didn’t have to check the mails before writing — they would still have been there in the afternoon.

The same applies to the blog article and your sales statistics. You could have fixed the neck pain with a few short exercises before writing, and the laundry can wait until the afternoon without any problems.

Because you haven’t prepared your working day properly, you have to interrupt it all the time. In our example, you don’t even manage to start working at all.

You have slowed yourself down.

Focus is a superpower

Who has decided to do something and thinks of nothing else, overcomes all obstacles — Casanova

Every day a thousand things and people compete for your attention. But your focus is limited. The more jobs you pay attention to, the less there is left for the individual task.

In a world that offers us more distraction every day, the ability to focus on one thing at a time is the most crucial skill of all.

The one who can work on a thing without distraction until it is done will always be more successful than the majority of the population.

The one who manages to check his emails only once a day, get up from his desk only after work is done, and provide a distraction-free work environment is a modern superhero. Focus is a superpower.

You can achieve everything, but not all at once

When I’ve achieved so many things, it’s because I’ve only ever wanted one thing at a time — William Pitt.

Maybe you belong to the people who have a bucket list. I’m a fan of such lists, really. The only problem is that most people don’t know, however, to get everything they want.

The answer is so simple: Always work on one project at a time. If your list includes things like writing a book, taking a sabbatical, learning Chinese, clearing out your house, and finding a lifelong partner, you’ll quickly find that some of your goals stand in the way of others.

How can you reconcile all these things? Your thoughts revolve around all these goals at once, and you don’t know what to start with.

By focusing on only one item on the list at a time. But what does that mean? Should you first finish your book, then start looking for a partner, then clean out your house and only then plan your Sabattical?

Basically yes. But I realize that this is overstraining the patience of most people. Also, I do not write a month-long exclusively at a book and do nothing else. That would certainly be possible in an ideal world, but not in the real world.

Is my advice to ignore almost everything, if you want to be successful, poorly thought out?

No, because if you remember the beginning of this article, you will find that focus and progress in several areas are not mutually exclusive.

Multiple focus phases per day — serial tasking

In the example from the beginning of this Article, I describe someone who wants to write 5000 words for his new book but is distracted by a thousand other things.

Be aware that it’s not about writing the whole book first, and then checking emails, doing laundry or anything else. That would be unrealistic.

I’m not saying that you have to ignore everything else until your big project is done. I mean you have to ignore everything else as long as you are actually working on your project.

There’s nothing wrong with working two hours highly concentrated on one project, then taking a short break, and then working two hours entirely focused on another project.

You can have several focus phases a day. The important thing is not to mix them. Standing up while writing and starting to clean up your house is not a good idea.

On the other hand, turning off the computer after reaching 5000 words and then clearing out your house is smart.

Doing several things in one day is not the same as doing several things at once. We must avoid Multitasking at all costs, but serial tasking can make us succeed faster in several areas.

If you really want to work through your bucket list, you can, for example, divide the tag like this:

1. work preparation (putting the coffee on the desk, providing work equipment, setting a daily goal.

2. writing without distraction until your daily goal is reached (for example 5000 words).

3. twenty minutes of rest

4. two hours of learning Chinese

5. twenty minutes of recreation

6. one hour to clear out the house

7. closing time

8. go out in the evening to meet people and look for a partner

bottom line

With Serial tasking, we get what we expect from Multitasking without having to accept its disadvantages.

Work daily for a fixed time without distraction on a single project, then take a break and then work on another project precisely the same way — on the same day.

So you’ll make steady progress every day in all the areas you’ve set out to do. The fixed time blocks for individual tasks allow you to focus entirely and make rapid progress.

Serial tasking beats Multi-Tasking. How do you want to work?

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