Bonus Video: Living Without Regret in the Age of Distraction
It took us over a century to realize the changes and impact that the Industrial Revolution was making on our lifestyle, culture, economy, and educational system.
Technology has changed all of that again, but this time it took less than a decade.
Today, if we need advice on a topic, it’s as close as posting a question to Facebook or Twitter. If we don’t know an answer, we can Google it. If we want something, we can buy it from our phones and have it delivered to our house. If we have a moment of down time, our social network timelines guarantee we never have to be bored. And we have the world’s catalog of movies, music, and books available to us from our living room.
Nobody in the history of anything has ever lived like this before.
It’s fantastic. Also, it’s a little bit terrifying.
There aren’t any experts in these fields any more. We’re all guessing about what’s next for education, the economy, communication, media, our jobs, our art, and our families.
Diligence, focus, art, parenting, marriage, priorities, work culture, and time management have always been moving targets. How much more now that we’re always connected thanks to the internet that lives in our pocket?
Do you have a vision for your life?
With time and focus being such precious commodities, it is all the more important to have a vision for our life and to run with it. Use it as a path for our creative work and as a guardrail for how we spend our time and energy.
So often I get this feeling that I can live however I want, in the moment, and over the long run everything will pan out for me. Something whispers to me that I needn’t worry about hard work, focus, planning, or diligence because one day my ship will come in and all the important things will just happen.
Alas, that is not how real life works. Those things don’t just happen all by themselves simply because I want them to. They happen through vision, planning, and a lot of hard work.
Benjamin Franklin wrote that “human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.”
Did you know that diligence is a skill?
The dreams of our heart will not come to be through magic or luck or by being picked by someone else. They are forged little by little, day by day. And it’s up to you to take ownership of pursuing them.
If you give too much attention to the big, long-term goals then you may end up despising the little daily steps needed to make progress.
But.. if you give too much focus on the granular, then it can be easy to feel like the “urgent” things are most important and to lose sight of the long game.
How do you reconcile these two vantage points?
How do you have an eye for the long-term while also focusing on what’s most important right now?
If you know what it is you’re moving toward, then you can slice that down into something small and actionable every day. Having a defined goal can help you to focus on actually accomplishing your idea and making it happen. A clear goal is a significant stimulator for creativity and motivation.
Looming, unanswered questions often lead to inaction and procrastination. You get frustrated at the ambiguity and indecisiveness in your work place, so why do you tolerate it in your own life as well? Overcoming this for yourself is often as simple as taking time to define an end goal and then taking the first step toward that goal.
Another significant stimulator for creativity is diligence.
Some of us had a diligence instilled in us by our parents, some of us have had to cultivate it on our own…
(What an awesome mindset!)
Diligence isn’t a personality type. Diligence is a skill you learn.
And that’s why it’s silly to think a creative person should live without routine, discipline, or accountability.
Sitting around being idle while we wait for inspiration is a good way to get nothing done. (This, my friends, is why The Focus Course is so helpful. But more on that another time.)
When you have defined your goals and distilled them down into daily lifestyle practices, it can change your life…
As I’ve written about before, diligence, focus, art, and entrepreneurship are all moving targets.
You need a tool — a secret weapon as it were — to help you hit those targets and have fun in the process.
The Power of a Focused Life
As I’ve shared before, the most common point of frustration I hear from people is two-fold:
- They don’t know how best to be using their time to do the things that are most important to them.
- Even if they did know, their schedule is completely full and they don’t know where to find the time.
You’re here because you know you’ve got awesome work you want to do. You have something valuable to share with the world. You have friends and family you want to build thriving relationships with. Your best work, your best ideas, and your best relationships are all still ahead of you.
Living with diligence and focus is not a personality type — it’s a skill. And since it’s a skill, it means you can learn it.
Aren’t you tired of just reading about productivity and creativity on the internet without seeing real change in your life?
Today, I want you to change your mind.
Change your mind about how you think of a life vision, and how you think of your own life.
Start by telling yourself you can change. Because you can. You can get a vision for your life. You can get better at how you focus your time and energy.
Focus is both a noun and a verb. Focus is something you can obtain and it’s also something you do.
From focusing on the task at hand, to getting your whole life into focus. And when you obtain focus, it is liberating.
We have a proven system for getting that focus. And thousands of people have gone through our training in The Focus Course.
In a few days (on Tuesday, November 14) we’ll be opening up registration. Stay tuned.