Wanting to do everything all at once will only make your life a frustrating one.
I used to be a fan of multitasking because I thought it was an insignia of productivity, being able to finish multiple unaligned tasks in a day, a week, a month, or at least for a whole project duration.
Multiple unaligned tasks are tasks entirely disconnected from one another, like children from different families with different goals. You can’t expect all of them to go one way, do you?
Who else in the world has all the time to master so many things and call themselves the best?
And there goes the famous adage of becoming a “jack of all trades, master of none.”
I was in my late 20s when I started getting fed up and exhausted (more like frustrated) about doing so many things but achieving much less than I had ever imagined. So with some introspection, I realized I was spreading myself too thin.
Gone are the days of trying to do so many things all at once (the 30s will slap you in the face with this hard truth). Now is the time to do something actually worth doing, something that matters, something that changes a life (or more). And I realized I can’t do something worth doing if I keep going on battles I don’t have to fight.
I learned that prioritizing things that yield greater results is the key to accomplishing more in life.
This doesn’t mean we have to do only one thing at a time. Knowing our priorities (and being rooted in our values) would help us choose connected tasks that amplify one another and help us achieve the results we want to accomplish.
Take for example, my desire to write better.
I am an academic researcher so I am expected to write and publish science. You might begin to think that reading beyond research articles, storytelling, and blogging are unrelated things, but I’d like to defer.
Reading feeds me information, and talking about it tests my understanding of a topic (because people I talk to could ask questions) and ultimately provides me wisdom, consolidating the things I have learned from what I’ve read and the interactions I have made. And then, blogging (yes, this one you are reading), trains me to translate my thoughts into words, which through consistent practice and mental exercise, allows me to do this faster than I used to.
So you see. Reading, speaking, and blogging might be different things, but they are related tasks that have helped me become a better writer. I may not be the best there is, not even the best academic researcher, but I could say that I am way better than I used to be just because I learned to do only the things that would help me become a better writer.
How about you?
Have you been spreading yourself too thin, wearing yourself out doing tasks that only accomplish less?