Don’t Just Work Hard — Work Hard on the Right Thing
Play For the Right Reasons
In Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, virtual reality has become part of everyday life. In what is known as the “oasis”, people can be essentially whatever they want to. The creator of this virtual world died and is going to give it away to whoever can solve three challenges. The last of which is to find and play the right game.
A line of people is waiting, as they use trial and error to guess the correct game. When they select the wrong game, their character is terminated within a few minutes. After a while, they find a game that doesn’t terminate them after a few minutes. They had picked the right game. However, after finishing it, their character was terminated. As it turns out, they had the wrong goal. To successfully complete the challenge, one wasn’t to finish it but enjoy and explore it.
We can similarly work very hard and fail because we are not working on the right thing. Unlike the case of Ready Player One, where it is a lack of knowledge that causes their failure, we often fail because we lack personal insight and direction. We try to get a lot done, but we don’t know why.
Your Essentialist Mission in Life
To overcome this, we need to know our priorities (knowing what is most important) our goals (how do we ensure growth in our priorities) and develop habits (routines that keep our priorities our priorities and move us towards our goals). If you know what your priorities are then you know what must come first. If you have set goals, then you created intentions for how you will work according to your priorities. When you develop habits, you improve and keep yourself sharp to perform well for what is most important.
Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism, has dedicated his life to researching, writing and teaching about how we manage our lives in terms of what is most important. He calls it essentialsm because he believes that there are many important things, but few things are essential. When we focus on what is essential, we can put more of our energy into a single thing. Thereby increasing our impact on the world.
I was so grateful for this book, that I took the opportunity to stop Greg on his way out of a conference he was speaking at. I thanked him for writing and asked him to sign my book. This is what he wrote: “Dear Sean, Find and live your essential mission in life”. I have reflected on that and realized that we need to decide what it is that we want out of life and put all of our attention and energy into making that happen. Chris Bailey says in his new book Hyperfocus, “productivity isn’t about just getting things done, it is about getting the right things done.”
What is your priority or “essential mission in life”? Are you living it? I challenge you to take a moment today to decide your mission. If you aren’t sure what your mission is, decide on the next step in your journey of what you’ll put all your energy into. Then reflect on how you spend your time. Do your calendar and to-do list mirror your mission? If not, then make a plan to get yourself on track. When you do, your life will be filled with more purpose, focus, and impact on the world.
Don’t waste your time on things that don’t really matter. Find and live your essential mission in life.
Call To Action
If you are ready to be focused and get productive, I am giving away my Strategic Guide to Being More Focused. This short guide goes through a series of strategies that you can begin implementing to improve your focus and get more done. Get the guide here.
