The Power of Doing One Thing at a Time
To be successful, you need to embrace the power of doing one thing at a time.
There was a point in time when I was overwhelmed with work, it was then that the idea of doing one thing at a time crossed mind. Due to the thoughts, I ended up deleting all the podcasts on my phone and the only thing that remained was the Tim Ferriss show.
I did the same in almost all areas of my life. In each area of my life, I decided to choose one thing and get rid of the rest.
Everything that is in the same category has been eradicated. Some examples of things I got rid of are these:
- I got rid of my black pair of earphones and remained with the white one.
- Instead of reading more than one book at a time, I focus on only one at a time.
- If I felt depressed, I would seek a cure from many areas but now I settled for meditation.
I also changed my approach to handling material possessions and applied it in all my day to day activities.
Examples include:
- I only focus on one talent instead of many.
- I only concentrate on one vision instead of many.
- During my free time, I carry out only one activity instead of many.
Make Assessments of What You Do
Most of us spend a lot of time in one area. I have many passions but if I look back to the past three years, my passion has been in web design. I have so many passions but I only focused on web design and left the rest for later. You will have 50 great ideas or things that matter to you, make a list of all 50 of them, circle the first 5 and then remove the rest. The top 5 is what you must focus on.
When I realized I’m focusing on web design and forgot all the other passions, I told myself I need to stop pretending I care about the other passions.
All along I have never missed listening to podcasts but I stopped recently. I made sure I was up to date with all the podcasts. After keenly analyzing them, I realized that all podcasts shared one message and only one of them helped in changing my life — The Tim Ferris Podcast.
Since I settled to only one podcast, I can enjoy it, I no longer rush and at times I even replay podcasts I’ve listened to previously. Do you know how refreshing it is to see the podcast screen with only one show?
If you decide to apply the same in your life, you will see very similar patterns.
Focus on Creation
If you do one thing at a time, you get focused. When focused, you will channel the focus towards works that are easy to remember instead of channeling the efforts to passions that will not help you in the long run.
Focus can be said to be the method you use to reach your states of flow and end up achieving results that look next to impossible.
When you do one thing, you focus on that thing and even your practice more. It is through doing one thing that you will be able to see your weak areas, your strongholds and the areas you need to improve on. Such feedback goes a long way in giving you excellent results.
Stop Being Overwhelmed
As humans, we cannot concentrate on many things at once. When you do one thing at a time, you do not get overwhelmed. We cannot miss that one area in our lives which we can be perfect at. If we decide to choose many things at once, you will get fatigued in no time.
If you want to overwhelm yourself, you are trying to tell yourself that you have to do everything to emerge successfully. However, I have seen that it is the exact opposite of this.
If you want to be successful, you have to put one thing as your focus and channel all your efforts into it. A successful person never gets thoughts of giving up. If you are always overwhelmed, you are increasing the negative thoughts you will have.
The negativity feelings will mix up and you will end up being a failure.
Overwhelming yourself is like creating an enemy that will fight your passion and energy.
Focus on One Thing
To be successful, you need to embrace the power of doing one thing at a time.
