Lots of people aspire to do plenty of things at the same time, from getting a well-paid job, to traveling around the world, becoming an amateur singer, and having their own a cafe, etc.; but the sad truth is, those who want to achieve a lot of things end up achieving nothing.
Why is that?
The ones who succeed, are those who have ONE very clear goal:
I want to change the world with technology. Period.
I want to be a world-class actor. Period.
I want to improve the lives of children in developing countries. Period.
Our brains become paralyzed when we multitask.
Science supports this.
In one experiment people were shown images of letters and numbers at the same time.[1] One group was instructed what to focus on while anothe r group was not. When the group was told to focus on numbers, they would be asked if the digits were even or odd. When they were told to focus on letters, they need to answer if they were vowels or consonants.
It turned out the group with focus performed much better. The group with no focus was simply distracted too much and had a hard time making the judgment and decision easily.
Too many life goals = no goal at all
The same applies to our life goals.
The fewer goals we have, the better we can direct our energy and attention to them, and the closer we get to success. To become an expert of anything, we need to be selective with our time and wisely spend the time on what matters most.
Yet when we have too many goals, we don’t know what to pay attention to and things will get messed up easily.
If you aren’t sure how to invest your time and energy wisely to achieve success, let’s take Warren Buffett’s advice.
Warren Buffett’s ‘20-Slot Rule’ teaches us the smartest investment for life.
When Warren Buffett lectured in a business school, his advice for ultimate financial welfare was to assume you only have 20 slots. That means you can only have 20 investments in your whole life.
When you know the number is limited, would you rather invest in each slot independently, or make your investment in the slots benefiting each other? Obviously, it would be a lot more worth it to accumulate the investments which can benefit the upcoming ones.
This doesn’t apply to only financial investments, but your life goals too.
Imagine having only 20 must-do items for your life, what’d they be?
Try to think about the 20 most important things you want to achieve in life, and review if each of them are interrelated (at least in some way). If not, what should be removed? What should be kept? And what should be added back instead?
When you’ve fixed your 20 most important slots, you’ll be much clearer about what you want and how much to invest in them. This approach is effective in helping you to eliminate goals that are seemingly great but indeed are bad for your future.
Don’t be greedy. Remember, the more focused you are, the more successful you’ll become.
Reference
| [1] | ^ | Standford: Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows |
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