Pick 3, Focus 2, Complete 1#

The idea…#

I’m thinking of the problem of focus and how that ties in with life balance. There are a million things to do and only so much time to do them. I was listening to a talk and two things I heard made me think of ways to help structure achieving tasks/goals. One is that you have to have an idea of what is important to you, meaning that if you don’t care about something, don’t have false pretenses of it being important. That’s not to say that you can ignore your health or other needs, but more about things that are outside of the “need” domain. The other is that there is a way to create a sort of addiction to a process and you can use that for your benefit.

Picking goals and objectives#

For the first point of priorities, having a select amount of things you care about can help weed out the waste. My number is 3 as I know for myself that I will lose the forest for the trees if I have too much more on my plate. For the shorter timeframe, you need to cut one (or more) and choose something to really focus on. Lastly in the immediate timeframe pick the one that just has to be done. Depending on the goals and timeframes it may look different but I’ll give a quick example of a long goals that are also implemeted in a shorter timeframe.

Goal Example…#

I want to complete an ironman race in under ten hours, I want to start a business, and I want to always have a healthy family dynamic. For me the focus would be the ironman and the family. The one to complete being the race, I’ve got a race date and at this point is the only of the three that has a defined ending. In the short term I have more focus on starting a business and training for the race. On the one to complete I let it vary through the week. Three days are a must for some sort of biking or running. Two evenings I have set aside for planning and prototyping ideas. Other evenings I have set aside for spending time with my wife or talking to other friends/family. At least one day a week I try to take charge of the kids and that should also count as a training day as far as I’m concered.

Maybe not the best example but the point that I would hope to make clear is that the short term should show progress to the longer and also paint a picture into where you are in that process.

Scarcity loop#

Opportunity, unpredictable rewards, quick repeatability… Using this pattern is extremely addictive and while there are a lot of people/systems in place trying to take advantage of it. I’m going to try to utilize it for my own gain. I haven’t worked out the exact how, but the idea is in motion. If it works or I think it is beneficial to anyone maybe I’ll write it down later.