This post was originally posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-you-need-hyper-focus-when-launching-freelancing-derik-bernhardt/
The To Do List is Killing Your Potential
Many people will give you advice when you begin balancing your Freelancing Side-Hustle with your daily grind, the main piece of advice is to create a "To Do List" and then begin to go down the list organizing it from most important to least.
But how do you know which is more important going on vacation with your family or a new contract that can make you a year's salary, but you must do it instead of the vacation?
The ONLY answer is, "the one that moves you closer to your Core Goals."
Meaning anything else that will be on your "To Do List" is really just busy work. We define busy work as "work that resembles being productive, while never actually producing anything."
Most people do busy work every day of their lives as a part of their daily routine, checking Email, Social Media shares, organizing a desk to "be more efficient", or any of the other lame excuses.
Busy work keeps us from our ultimate goals by creating distractions, instead of focusing on the things that will move us forward into Becoming Future-Proof Business Professionals.
Gary Keller, of Keller-Williams, came to this conclusion while watching the 1990's Western Comedy City Slickers. Then had it calcified when he went back to working with his over 100,000 independent agents of Keller-Williams Real Estate.
He would repeatedly create laundry lists of things to do between calls, only to find that while they had performed several of the tasks they would end up leaving the most important ones undone.
Finally out of desperation he said:
Finally, out of desperation, I went as small as I could possibly go and asked: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”
Time to replace the To Do List
Instead, ask yourself two very important questions…
- First, taken from The One Thing by Gary Keller *, "What is the ONE thing I can do to make a difference in Launching my Freelancing Side-Hustle today?"
- Second, from Tim Ferriss writer of The 4 Hour Body *, "If this was easy, what would it look like?"
Armed with these two questions we can break down each potential project into easily managed blocks. Allowing us to focus on and accomplish more tasks faster than if we attempted to do many tasks all at once.
Because, when we lose focus, results begin to suffer.
Why will certain people accomplish more today than others?
We all have the same amount of hours in a day, even if some people only sleep 4-6 hours a night, there are always 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week.
So how do some accomplish more than others in the same time period?
The answer is simple… focus
Hyper-Focus, also known as The Concept of "Going Small"
"Going Small" allows you to ignore the "coulda's" and "shoulda's" of life
It allows you to eliminate the thoughts that lead to hyper-distraction and a lack of results. Instead, by Leveraging the Concept of Going Small you allow yourself to acknowledge that not all tasks provide you with the same return on investment.
Through Hyper-Focus we are able to achieve extraordinary results, directly correlated with the narrowing of your focus.
Most focus on the opposite
Most people focus on the big and most complicated endeavors in order to achieve their goals. These are the kinds of tasks engineered to eat time and produce no results.
Ultimately this causes them to spiral out of control.
As the Personal Calendar and To Do List continue to grow with new needs, they are pulled further from our Core Goals. And as fewer and fewer things are being checked off of the list, they are left putting out a dozen of highly complicated fires.
Eventually, their goals begin to feel out of reach, causing them to settle for a less desirable result, causing them to reduce their expectations, abandon their once vibrant dreams and end up in a situation where their life is the only thing that ends up being small.
Real Achievement requires Subtraction, not Addition
When we are Launching a Freelancing Side-Hustle we don't need to pile on more work. Instead, we should hyper-focus in hopes of achieving our Core Goals. If we were to parse each task down to the Core Goals associated with our achieving it.
With addition, you end up trying to do far too much at any given time. This ends up negatively affecting your Professional and Social Life. Through missed deadlines at work, canceled meetings with clients, loss of sleep due to stress, poor dietary choices and lack of exercise due to lack of time or energy, and limiting time with friends and family out of guilt.
Does this sound like you'd be accomplishing anything?
Let's take a look at some of the "Greats"
Throughout history, we have been shown signs of greatness, but even arguably the greatest of the modern polymaths, Pablo Picasso, did not spread his focus across multiple projects at any given time. His art is best known for it's blue and rose periods where he explored the influence of colors on the emotional state. Then later in his life, he focused on sculptures and philosophy.
Halfthor Bjornsson, 2018 "World's Strongest Man", is another person who understands the benefits of hyper-focus. To Deadlift 1,041 pounds you MUST maintain focus or else you risk injury or worse. Yet Halfthor also understands how to pivot that focus and turn it on his acting career where he is better known as The Game of Thrones character, Gregor Clegane, or The Mountain. To work at the level he performs at, whether performing massive feats of strength or performing as an extremely recognizable character, you cannot allow yourself to be distracted.
Only one simple process is "required" to gain Hyper-focus
A simple process that is guaranteed to provide truly life-changing results.
This simple process is being employed by almost every top performer across all disciplines. No matter the day, no matter the location, or the size of the project this process just works.
So what's the process?
This "simple process is to ask "Why?" and keep asking until you cannot find any deeper answer.
Why ask why?
"Why?" is one of the few questions that are a single word question that maintains a unique purpose we can leverage to our benefit. That purpose is to get to the ultimate singular point of motive and understand it completely.
And by continuously asking "Why?", you eventually find yourself staring at One Thing…
And as Gary Keller says, "[…] that's the point."
If you enjoyed this
Head over to our LinkedIn Group and let us know what One Thing you are Hyper-Focused on to Launch a Freelancing Side-Hustle.
Affiliate links contained within this email include:
The One Thing by Gary Kelly * - https://www.flosscareer.com/one-thing
The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss * - https://www.flosscareer.com/4hour-chef
Non-Affiliate links contained within this email include:
Future-Proof Business Professional Toolkit - https://www.flosscareer.com/resources
I use Open Source in my Business | LinkedIn Group - https://www.flosscareer.com/linkedin
* - Denotes an affiliate link, through your purchase I will receive compensation. Check out the Affiliate Disclosure for more information.
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