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We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

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Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#31

Post by Acalyptol »

I didn't put much toughs about it regarding life goals and aspirations, but regarding little creative projects, I've found that it's really hard to focus just on one thing because passion for the project progressively drops while ideas for new projects flourish.

I've tried sticking to doing one and only one project, but all what happened is that my passion dropped to the point of zero productivity and I was doing nothing. Can't start a new project because this one isn't finished. Can't finish this project because new ones are more interesting.

I imagine that it's about the same for life, and that the solution is so much more complex.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#32

Post by sharemywin »

scandox wrote: post #11

There seems to be an assumption here (which I've seen in many other places) that ordinary people are somehow missing this trick, are failing to grasp this. I think everybody knows this - more or less explicitly perhaps. The fact is we might talk about becoming rich, but most of us don't really want to - not in a real way. Not to become worth "millions" in our sixties like this guy's mentor. People want to live rich,…

Kevin HartVerified account

@KevinHart4real

My name is Kevin Hart and I WORK HARD!!! That pretty much sums me up!!! Everybody Wants To Be Famous But Nobody Wants To Do The Work

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#33

Post by sharemywin »

rsto wrote: post #2

> it’s much more effective to focus your effort on one thing. This is the gist I got from this post, and while I agree with the statement I think it is too simplistic. I am one of those persons that "have a long list of goals, desires, and wants for your life" as teased in the article. I think it's clear that focus helps to achieve an item on that list. It's the issue of deciding what to focus on, when multiple items…

I think another important point is can you even accomplish your goal in the first place? if not break it into smaller goals or find another one.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#34

Post by EADGBE »

maxxxxx wrote: post #30
d--b wrote: post #26

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything . 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' la…

Point 1 is most important. There is no guarantee for success. You may be doing everything "right" but if you are not at the right place at the right time meeting the right people you can still fail. A lot of life is luck and life is not fair. Point 5 is also important. By definition we are all average. And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for.

> And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for.

That's a bitter pill to swallow.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#35

Post by zardo »

d--b wrote: post #26

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything . 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' la…

5. You're probably best at some combination of skills. There are far more combinations of skills than there are people, and any one person can only master a small subset of all skills.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#36

Post by maxxxxx »

EADGBE wrote: post #34
maxxxxx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 1 is most important. There is no guarantee for success. You may be doing everything "right" but if you are not at the right place at the right time meeting the right people you can still fail. A lot of life is luck and life is not fair. Point 5 is also important. By definition we are all average. And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for.

> And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for. That's a bitter pill to swallow.

Very common though. I am very passionate about sports but my natural ability is probably bottom 10%. That means I have spent a lot of time pursuing something where I would never be "successful"in the usual sense. I also have met a lot of people who had the ability but didn't really like it.

Sport has still benefited me a lot and was totally worth it to me but in terms of success it was a total waste of time.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#37

Post by athenot »

d--b wrote: post #26

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything . 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' la…

> 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer.

That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good enough to make a career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be better than the rest.

If we scale back the risk levels, then this is probably true. For instance, focus on a particular field of software where there is a decent demand and you will very likely be able to live off of it.

Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful.

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#38

Post by aj_g »

greeble wrote: post #22
g00gler wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting Talib Kweli, "Give me the fortune, keep the fame". Though I agree with your sentiment as it applies in broad strokes I'd like to sell some software, make ~$10M, and be a recluse. I don't even need the $10M, though, I'd be happy to not have to wake up at 7 o'clock, rush to the train, then sit at a desk all day.

Debbie Harry sang this in 1989: "I'll keep the money, you can have the fame" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_That_Man

Huh, didn't realize this was such a popular sentiment: Tupac, 1996: "All I want is money, fuck the fame, I'm a simple man" https://genius.com/41188

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#39

Post by BeetleB »

athenot wrote: post #37
d--b wrote: post #26

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything . 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' la…

> 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good enough to make a career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be better than the rest.…

>That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that.

Not true. Trust me. There is no guarantee. You've not met people who are singularly pursuing a goal, and it's clear they'll never improve past what they've already achieved (which can be no better than average)?

Re: We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything

#40

Post by dasil003 »

athenot wrote: post #37
d--b wrote: post #26

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything . 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' la…

> 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good enough to make a career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be better than the rest.…

> Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful.

I agree with your whole post, but I urge caution at your parenthetical because it could easily play into the VC mentality of needing 9-10 figures to consider a company successful. Of course it's easy for them to take the risk with other people's money, but as a founder you need to ask yourself what your goal is.

It's dangerous for two reasons: first, you may build something amazing that would easily have been sustainable but fails because unchecked greed demands that it be the biggest even if that is not it's fundamental value (ie. see Twitter). The other is that billion dollar companies are not built by dreaming of the perfect vision, but rather smart execution leveraging available resources and opportunities—the vision sounds good in Wired article, but there are millions of dreamers with visions that never accomplished anything; you need execution and relentless learning, and that is very hard if you are not focused on where you are now and where you want to be in a few weeks or months.

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