Sequence

Try not to have two things requiring your immediate attention at the same time.

Always choose one. Keep it front and centre as you dedicate your full energy to it. Push the other (or the others) to the background, silencing its pressing requests. Once you have completed a meaningful part of what you have selected first, only then move your full attention to what is next. Repeat.

Sometimes you are so busy that things keep taking turns in your field of attention. You complete a task, move on to a second item, go back to the first to continue to the next milestone, begin with a third to take it to completion, switch to the second to progress it some more, and so on. If feels like you are dancing.

That’s the incredible feeling of working in sequence.

Superpower

Can you put boundaries around what happens in a given day? Can you keep it enclosed in the specific situation, the momentary emotion, the sudden thought?

Professional setbacks don’t have to spill into your personal life. A rejection or even a big failure do not have to determine your next actions or take away from your motivation. Someone being rude does not mean that every person you will meet from there onwards will be deserving a cold stare.

What happens is in the moment. The story we build around it can stay with us for a long time.

What happens is immutable. The story we build around it can be shaped however we prefer.

It’s a superpower to reclaim.

In need of systems

The real edge in today’s world is not to have all the answers, but to motivate people to invest their resources – time, energy, money, attention – to find the answers. Possibly working with others.

We all heard that the world is more complex than ever, more ever-changing than ever, more fast-paced than ever. Yet we fail to understand what that means. Most of us are not asked to draw from their previous expertise to come up with ready-made solutions. Quite the contrary, the more you can tame the knowledge and information you have, sit with a problem, ask around, collect ideas, prepare the setting, coach people, lead the execution, the more you will be relevant.

We don’t need actions. What we need is systems.

Not a 0, not a 1

Success is never binary. And very rarely you land on a 0 or on a 1.

Most often, you find yourself somewhere in between.

Understand this to appreciate the progress you have made, as well as the path you still have ahead of you.

The road you take

If you navigate the internet in search of answers and all you get is confusion and frustration, you are not any different from most of us.

And it is not that people are mean and they don’t want to let you in their own secret.

The point is that there is no secret.

There are probably hundreds of roads to get where you are going. Some of them seem similar, some are very different, some contradict each other. Some are cryptic, some are clear, some seem to go in completely different direction but are actually the two sides of a same coin.

It’s easy to get lost on roads that others have built for themselves.

That’s when you understand that the only road that matters is the one you choose to take. Every day.