
We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything - sus_007
http://dariusforoux.com/the-power-of-compounding/
======
d--b
ugh, I can't stand this.

1\. No, it will not _necessarily_ happen. You can focus on one thing and
_still_ fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be
a professional golfer.

2\. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better
succeed because if not, it means you failed _everything_.

3\. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for
everyone. Steve Jobs' last words were about how giving everything to being the
best at business stripped him from a good chunk of enjoyable things life has
to offer.

4\. Some people are excellent at a lot of stuff - Leonardo da Vinci is a good
example.

5\. Everyone should learn not to expect to become someone exceptional. You'll
live happier if you accept the fact that you may never be in the top 0.1% of
anything. As a consolation, you'll be like the remaining 99.9% of humanity.

~~~
athenot
> _1\. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and
> still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be
> a professional golfer._

That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if
he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good _enough_ to make a
career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be
better than the rest.

If we scale back the risk levels, then this is probably true. For instance,
focus on a particular field of software _where there is a decent demand_ and
you will very likely be able to live off of it.

Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only
tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once
you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only
thing required to be successful.

~~~
dasil003
> _Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only
> tolerate at most a handful of players (that 's pretty much any business,
> once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the
> only thing required to be successful._

I agree with your whole post, but I urge caution at your parenthetical because
it could easily play into the VC mentality of needing 9-10 figures to consider
a company successful. Of course it's easy for them to take the risk with other
people's money, but as a founder you need to ask yourself what your goal is.

It's dangerous for two reasons: first, you may build something amazing that
would easily have been sustainable but fails because unchecked greed demands
that it be the biggest even if that is not it's fundamental value (ie. see
Twitter). The other is that billion dollar companies are not built by dreaming
of the perfect vision, but rather smart execution leveraging available
resources and opportunities—the vision sounds good in Wired article, but there
are millions of dreamers with visions that never accomplished anything; you
need execution and relentless learning, and that is very hard if you are not
focused on where you are now and where you want to be in a few weeks or
months.

------
scandox
There seems to be an assumption here (which I've seen in many other places)
that ordinary people are somehow missing this trick, are failing to grasp
this. I think everybody knows this - more or less explicitly perhaps. The fact
is we might talk about becoming rich, but most of us don't really want to -
not in a real way. Not to become worth "millions" in our sixties like this
guy's mentor.

People want to live rich, varied, exciting lives: Now. Sure, getting rich or
being rich would help...but if it means living in a way that is controlled,
patient and strategic for 30 years...well then no they don't really want that.

~~~
svantana
Not only that, but saying "rich" is usually shorthand for famous and/or having
high social status. The money itself seems to me the least interesting aspect
of "making it". Especially in the startup world, what most of us dream of (in
my experience), is recognition from our peers, attention, etc, not zeros on a
bank statement.

~~~
g00gler
Quoting Talib Kweli, "Give me the fortune, keep the fame".

Though I agree with your sentiment as it applies in broad strokes I'd like to
sell some software, make ~$10M, and be a recluse.

I don't even need the $10M, though, I'd be happy to not have to wake up at 7
o'clock, rush to the train, then sit at a desk all day.

~~~
greeble
Debbie Harry sang this in 1989:

"I'll keep the money, you can have the fame"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_That_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_That_Man)

~~~
aj_g
Huh, didn't realize this was such a popular sentiment: Tupac, 1996: "All I
want is money, fuck the fame, I'm a simple man"
[https://genius.com/41188](https://genius.com/41188)

------
rsto
> it’s much more effective to focus your effort on one thing.

This is the gist I got from this post, and while I agree with the statement I
think it is too simplistic.

I am one of those persons that "have a long list of goals, desires, and wants
for your life" as teased in the article. I think it's clear that focus helps
to achieve an item on that list. It's the issue of deciding what to focus on,
when multiple items are competing for the 24 hours we have per day. Most life-
advice, as the article, starts off with stating the conflict and immediately
jumps to the conclusion. The hard part is in the middle.

Personally, I came to the conclusion that everything I postpone to a later
stage in life might just as well never materialise. If I can't live with that
thought, then it has to be done concurrently.

That's probably different for short-term project that the article uses as
examples, but these typically aren't the items I'm conflicted about.

~~~
johnke
> Personally, I came to the conclusion that everything I postpone to a later
> stage in life might just as well never materialise. If I can't live with
> that thought, then it has to be done concurrently.

Sheryl Sandberg recently gave a talk to Inc. where she used the term 'ruthless
prioritisation' to describe her decision-making process. It basically comes
down to finding the best thing you can do and making a lot of tough choices.

Now, she was discussing this concept from a business point of view, but
speaking as someone who works from home, minds children, and runs a house, it
also resonated with me. I have a long list of things to do on any given day,
and only a certain number of hours in which to do them. Most days, I end up
feeling guilty about not getting something done; it feels like I'm failing in
one of my areas of responsibility. Or, worse, as you say, I try to get
everything done concurrently and either fail or risk burnout.

The main thing that ruthless prioritisation does is give me the space to
forgive myself for the things I couldn't do. I know that I calculated the best
thing I could do on a given day and I worked on _that_. It makes postponing
things a lot easier to handle.

~~~
snarf21
Reminds me of John Doerr's advice on how to be successful: "Be ruthlessly
intellectually honest about the biggest threat to your business and marshall
all available resources to solve that." Rinse and repeat. The key is not just
to do just one thing. You need focus _and_ vision, then you'll get to your
most successful as soon as possible.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
In open source, I take the opposite approach. I tend to take on large,
difficult projects and get burned out working on them for too long. Combine
this with wanting to get a lot of cool projects done, and my approach is to
have lots of things in progress and switch between projects often. When I
start to get tired or bored of a particular project, I switch gears so I can
continue working at my usual pace without getting burned out.

I feel satisfied with the success of this approach so far. Among my large
(with a scope of, say, 1000+ commits and/or 10000+ LoC), 2 are mature, 2 are
WIP but suitable for practical use, and 2 are in their early stages. Among
medium projects, maybe about 3 are mature and 5-10 are WIP. Dozens of smaller
projects and experiments exist in various stages of completion as well.

I haven't finished _everything_ yet, but I have got a lot done and I'm happy
with the results. Getting over the initial hump is also a great way of getting
others interested in contributing to open source projects, which expands
thoroughput significantly. My advice is not to be scared of taking on lots of
projects :)

------
keyle
The only things I've truly succeeded at were simple: I didn't have a choice
but to succeed.

I guess it's on par with this article, you can't lose focus when you have your
back against the abyss. It's your real focus.

~~~
agumonkey
When backed against the wall I have 101% of brain capacity. Otherwise it's 70%
at best. And that's when my ISP is down.

~~~
kamaal
David Allen, has said this in his TEDx talk. In moments of crisis and duress,
its very easy for the brain to reserve all its cycles to the one task at hand.

However once that moment slips, your mind begins to wander. So a degree of
constancy of purpose is needed. And you need a kind of GTD system to
prioritize and eliminate what is unnecessary.

~~~
agumonkey
Surely. I also believe we need some training. If you give up at the first
mental shortcoming you will take a lot of time. Making a habit of having
thinking runs of 30min or a long enough period.

Also, I believe there's another factor at play in crisis, you don't hesitate.
Any option will do as long as it's not too absurd. Your brain is full on, but
your mind is also more open.

------
wepple
The author suggests that good things take time (there are no shortcuts), and
focus on a primary goal is how you achieve.

Then his instagram bio;

I write, run a business, podcast, draw, run, and lift weights. Get my free
ebook that teaches you to 2X your productivity.

------
pillowkusis
this is classic survivorship bias. in order to reach incredibly high levels of
success, of course you have to dedicate all of your energy to it.

Of course, this ignores all the people who dropped everything to pursue
something and failed, catastrophically too, because they let everything else
suffer in pursuit of this objective.

It's like singling out big slot machine winners and saying, "look! the common
thread among all these people who won it huge is that they spent thousands of
dollars, all day, every day, playing the slots, and eventually they made it.
So if you want to make money playing slots, you have to just keep at it!"

------
firefoxd
It's fun to touch at every thing especially in a start up. This summer I was
on the phone, at the clients office, documenting everything with a
videographer, mentoring the interns, making youtube videos, building the
website, building the app, meeting with investors...

Mid August came and I looked back, everything was only partially done. Not
only I was exhausted of everything, I wasn't having fun anymore.

I have decided to put everything aside and focus on the one thing i know how
to do well. I am only programming, and in two weeks i have done more then I
did all summer long.

------
Acalyptol
I didn't put much toughs about it regarding life goals and aspirations, but
regarding little creative projects, I've found that it's really hard to focus
just on one thing because passion for the project progressively drops while
ideas for new projects flourish.

I've tried sticking to doing one and only one project, but all what happened
is that my passion dropped to the point of zero productivity and I was doing
nothing. Can't start a new project because this one isn't finished. Can't
finish this project because new ones are more interesting.

I imagine that it's about the same for life, and that the solution is so much
more complex.

------
patkai
I appreciate the post, and it would do good for most of us to understand how
compounding works in so many things in our lives, also in relationships etc.
But it isn't one thing vs. everything, there is also a balanced middle ground.
A generalist might be interested in several things, and not care if as a
specialist she could be "more successful", usually measured by an
oversimplified metric, e.g. number of dollars or books sold. But this is a
very good topic.

------
ivanhoe
One thing at the time is never really just one thing in real life, specially
if you have a family. But lets say a few important things, and doing it for a
limited period of time (weeks, months, a few years), then I can accept this as
a solid advice. Otherwise, IMHO life is just to damn short to waste it all on
a single goal, even if you make it in the end. As they say traveling is not
about destination, but what you choose to do along the way...

------
amelius
I'd add to that: if you always aim too high, take on too difficult tasks, then
you'll end up nowhere (but you might learn a lot).

~~~
tomhoward
Or: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” [1]

I'm not strongly for/against either position: both can be true in different
contexts.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4324-shoot-for-the-moon-
eve...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4324-shoot-for-the-moon-even-if-you-
miss-you-ll-land)

~~~
sage76
I think shooting for the moon works when there's several rungs of possible
results to land on.

In startups, the results tend to be so polarized that shooting for the moon
again and again can burn you out.

~~~
amelius
Yeah, better to aim a little lower, earn some money, and _then_ shoot for the
moon.

------
GarvielLoken
I agree that it is a good mindset. But i think the advice to spend a little
time each day on something consistently is more important. That allows you to
improve several things concurrently.

------
valuearb
Buffett would agree with everything written here, including not trying to get
rich by actively investing in the stock market. He recommends index funds.

------
tw1010
Not everyone in the olympics can get the gold.

