Focusing Your Efforts

If you’re fortunate enough to get to a place where you’re pretty good at something, you’ll have people asking you to join them at their company, their team, their book club, or whatever. It’s flattering, especially when you can recall a time when no one invited you to anything.

But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Pick your battles, save your gunpowder, live to fight another day, marshall your forces, more wood behind fewer arrows – you can take your pick of militarily-inspired phrases — but it all comes down to one thing: focus.

I just saw a post on Medium titled Be a Manager. His thinking was that “people like you” that refuse to be managers are why there aren’t enough great managers in the world. It’s a clever way to phrase it. He’s basically double-dog daring you to join him in the managerial ranks by appealing to your ego. “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

I’m told I’m not bad at management. According to that essay, I should keep it up for the good of mankind. But here’s the rub: the more things you do, the less time you have to get really good at each one. Sure, you should expand your horizons. And yes, having a blend of skills is important to be a well-rounded individual. Most people would agree.

But I don’t think the average person needs help aimlessly scattering their ever-expanding interests into the wind. I think the average person needs to get better at focusing, really drilling in on a skill, and mastering it.

When I was interviewing for a design job a few years back, I was asked where I want to be in five years. Without thinking I said “teaching”. I think I surprised him, and I definitely suprised myself. But my answer was exactly right, I just hadn’t noticed it until then.

I can design, I can draw, I can write code, I can manage, I can make movies, I can write, and I can teach. I could do all of them at the same time if I wanted to. But I’m making a conscious effort to do less of the other stuff so I can get better at this. I want to teach for a living, so that’s what I’m focusing on.