Reset your foundation.

Remain focused in the face of paralysing choice.

Recently, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by life and it’s endless avenues and responsibilities; have I achieved enough? am I following the correct path? am I paying enough attention to my friends, family and relationship?

Commitments, doubts and self imposed responsibilities have rained over me like a tsunami of potential opportunities to fail and I’ve been struggling to keep my head above water.

The pressure of trying to appease key figures in my life: boss, partner, family and friends has become a lot to handle. Least of all being met with the scrupulous expectations I burden upon myself.

When choice is vast and the pressure of accountability appears high, it often feels easier to avoid responsibility all together. To run to comfort and to escape from dizzying thought.

It’s important, however, to realise that the fact of the matter is that if you’re feeling overwhelmed in life, something will suffer; quantity or quality.

You’ll either provide insufficient services in a desirable volume; or you’ll provide sufficient services in an undesirable volume.

The key to resting the cluttered mind is to disturb the noise and to concentrate your focus. This can include self maintenance too. The crucial thing to note here is that you must target one objective at a time, instead of three or four which often leads to choice paralysis.

A great example of how choice paralysis affects the mind is with Dr. Sheena Iyengar, a Professor of Business at the Columbia University in the United States. Dr. Iyengar conducted an incredibly popular experiment in 1995 known as ‘The jam study’.

Iyengar and her research assistants arranged a booth of Wilkin & Sons Jams in a busy California gourmet market place. Every couple of hours the booth would change from displaying 24 styles of jams to a selection of six. Customers on average tested two jams each and where offered $1 off of one jar of Wilkin & Sons jams for their participation.

The study showed that whilst 60 percent of the consumers where enticed by the large selection of jams; 30 percent of those that tried the smaller selection made a purchase, and a mere three percent bought jam that tested the larger selection.

Will limiting choice improve satisfaction? This study, alongside many others like it, indicate that an overwhelming range of choice and decision making can often be quite debilitating.

This correlates directly to the modern day culture of real time engagement through notifications, pop ups, emails, and instant messages.

The thing that many young people don’t realise is that once you choose your lane, success is far more likely than you would imagine. The war is halfway over just by deciding which path to take and sticking to it.

The key is patience, discipline and focus.

When the barrier is often where to direct your attention instead of how long to direct your attention, this is the answer.

We may have all heard Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that the mastery of any skill, in any field, requires 10,000 hours of practice. An intimidating thought and a peak that seems impossible to climb. However, writer Josh Kaufman argues that only 20 hours are required to become good at something.

Baring this in mind, the thought of trying anything new seems far less terrifying. The real challenge is to chip away at those 20 hours day by day, without loosing focus.

Find a path and stick to it, you’ll never know where it will take you, but you won’t go anywhere standing still.