How to Manage Multiple Interests

I want to do everything the idea of being pushed into this box and deprived of the room to Branch out and try different things that's horrible to me and chances are this gets even worse when you enter a career because of this hyp specialized economy we've built that's not how humans work we're on this Earth for more than being just a cog in a machine doing this one specific task and becoming good at one specific thing and if you share that feeling that's amazing because that's the sign of someone curious someone who's a lifelong learner and someone who's always wanting to try new things and explore everything the world has to offer so this feeling is good but if you don't manage it correctly you could be digging a hole beneath yourself one that's going to sabotage you later on in your Chase to do everything you end up moving nowhere because your focus is so diluted across many different activities you've heard the phrase jack of all trades master of none and I kind of hate that saying for two reasons first because it's wrong in practice and second of all you don't have to be considered a master to be good at something but to give it some credit we still have to balance our focus and at least make some progress somewhere because if you jump from Hobby to hobby from business to business you'll never make any solid movement forward in any direction this is shiny object syndrome digging a trap for you and you falling into it and if you're expecting me to say you have to abandon this and become specialized then you'd be wrong because there is a way to compromise there is a way to do both things the magic is in the balance and I know this because I've been through the struggle the desire to do everything only to be stretched so thin that nothing gets done I've tried and failed a bunch of different Hobbies Pursuits business plans you name it for example before I started this channel I jumped from logo design to Brand identity and then finally to thumbnail design and I had nothing to show for it along the way except the learning I never succeeded in the traditional sense I love the idea of the Renaissance Man the character who is good at many different skills and reliable but at the same time it's not an excuse to suck at all of them it's good to fail and learn from mistakes but not forever at some point we have to see some action today I'm happy to say that I found that balance I found a way to consistently improve in many different areas but also not in the sense that it's unrealistic and leaves me feeling disappointed I like to read I like to write I like to lift to play the violin and of course to make videos that help you I'm so grateful for having that balance because it was hard fought it took a long time to settle down and find the things that mattered to me but even today despite all of that I get this inner voice saying when are you going to start this when are you going to start that when are you going to Branch out when you going to do this and that and this and that and it's a nightmare so here I want to share everything I've learned along the way about managing the desire to do everything and staying focused every strategy and every principle that helps me become a generalist but at the same time keeps me focused enough to see consistent results in each area first we have to face an uncomfortable truth that doing everything is impossible we all have the same 24 hours and we will have a bunch of essential duties we have to complete every day so how do you budget your time with intention how do you avoid overfilling your plate and then getting frustrated that you can't eat it all I did this by making a hierarchy of all my interests with just a 10-minute exercise you can really narrow down your scope and create a realistic plan for improvement so just over a year ago I came to the harsh conclusion that I had to smarten up I couldn't do everything and it was time to create a plan a plan of what to do on a piece of paper I wrote down all of my interests things like skills to learn Hobbies business ideas everything so I sat down in the Silence of my bedroom to have a think what on this list is most important to me I chose my answers and I ranked them based on how precious they were so the things at the top would be the activities that I couldn't live without and as you go down the list they suddenly become less and less important since my most meaningful Pursuit settled at the top of the list it gave me this Vision this Clarity on where I should be spending my time because before I was overwhelmed I had all these ideas in my head of what to do but once I had them laid out here I could see things with a bird's eye view and it made much more sense on picking what I should prioritize and what made maybe is more of a distraction in fact you could even do this right now where you sit get out a piece of paper and just jot down some of the interests that matter to you this takes just a few minutes and it will set you up for the next step which is how you create your personalized strategy for dealing with them the next step is the time management itself and I can't help but cringe a little when I hear the words time management because I always Associated to the the finance hustle Bros and the self-help gurus but regardless of that link I can't deny the value of it time management works and I can voucher it because last year I started planning every single day my week on Google Calendar and I must say it's one of the best changes I've made in my life for actually getting more done of course at first I had my doubts to me this seemed picky and obsessive like I was micromanaging every minute of time and not allowing myself to enjoy life but after trying it myself I realized I was wrong I had the wrong picture because it's not an excuse to constantly work 24/7 nor is it an excuse to neglect your family and your friends it's just a way to value your time and to use it with more intention time is the raw resource that you need to reach all of your goals whether they're in Fitness in your social life in your business in everything so if you can effectively manage your time and align it with your ideals then the success will follow on from there now let's pull the idea back to your interests I took this list of interests that I made earlier and I went on Google Calendar and I used this list to plan out my ideal week one that would give me the foundations for getting where I want to be and because you ranked everything in order of importance you can really allocate the time correctly and give more time to what matters the most for example making quality videos is my priority at the moment even above college work which is probably not something I should be saying but I don't care it's a priority so I'm willing to spend way more time on that than even College work my schedule is full of editing it's full of script writing and coming up with new ideas my second most precious goal is to become a better writer so naturally I dedicate lots of time to it sure I'd love to have more time to practice illustration maybe or do something with my hands but the point is I simply don't have the time to give that because for every hour I spend chasing some side hobby or interest I lose one hour for something more meaningful to me this is a zero sum game and you have to be willing to make sacrifices but now for the good news you can still be well-rounded you can still make time for the less important things that bring you Joy and bring you diversity because once you have your calendar with the bird's ey view on the most important things you can find those little pockets of time for other activities for example I've been playing the violin since since the end of 2019 and even though it's been so many years I'm still not that good at it I'm kind of bad and I know why it's because I practice for maybe half an hour maybe four times a week is that enough to get proficient no I know that if I wanted to get better I'd probably have to double my time spent practicing and maybe get a teacher too but right now I'm not going to do either of those things and it might sound counterintuitive but it makes sense it all it's all in line with my strategy to me violin is a side Hobby and I value my main ones over it I mean sometimes I'll even quit the violin session early just because I want to finish a script or do some more writing but despite all that there are Pockets during my week that I can drop everything and just play some music and for that small investment of time I still get the chance to improve my skills and also enter this whole different world of creativity to me that is a powerful balance that is truly The Best of Both Worlds the next tip is something I wish someone would have told me earlier it would have saved so much mental burden and just freed me of the feeling that I have to do everything right now if you want the sustainable part of becoming well-rounded then I hate to say it but you may have to scrap some of your interests just for now just temporarily I'm quite young sure I might get hit by a car tomorrow but chances are I have several decades left to live and through the mystical power of YouTube analytics it's probably the same for you so then why are we stressing why are we trying to juggle a bunch of different Hobbies right now that's what I used to do I had the a narrow view of time and it made me miserable now I'm all for momento Mori and I'm all for enjoying the present but it's no fun if you feel obligated to fill every single spare minute with one of your 10 different hobbies and that's why I'm happy to not follow certain things I know my plate is full today and I have no room to add anything to it but at the same time I'm sure that at some point in the future I will be given the chance to create time and create room for new and exciting Pursuits building your character is a lifelong game literally so if you feel the same way maybe overwhelmed by too many options then I invite you to reflect what can I defer to the Future which Pursuits can wait so that the more important ones can shine in the here and now this next tip I'm quite proud of because I haven't seen it anywhere else and I use it to develop some new skills without adding anything to my schedule in other words I spent zero extra time doing this it sounds too good to be true but believe me it's not because rather than adding new things to your schedule you reframe existing ones this will make more sense with the story so bear with me in my first year of college I had to start cooking every meal myself yeah tragic I know but no more could I rely on the home-cooked meals I was used to and of course it's no big deal to me now but at the time it was a big change it was intimidating even back then I knew all about cooking so I had two choices do I make struggle meals for myself every day like we're under siege or something or do I learn how to cook maybe you can see where this is going with my budget right now I can't afford to eat out very often nor do I want to screw up my health with lowquality ready meals so I have to start cooking I thought to myself since I can't avoid it I may as well get good at it so from that day onwards I took a little bit of extra effort to improve my cooking skills I would watch technique videos on YouTube I would find good recipes I would pick up the ingredients on the way home from college or whatever and I would do my best to execute the recipes properly I learned all the fundamentals uh basic knife skills things like heat transfer and how different foods pair with each other sure I had my failures and I had frustrations but what did I get out of it well I got some damn good food and a skill that I would use for the rest of my life and I could do all of this at no extra cost to any of my other interests so again I ask you to reflect is there something every day that you have to do that you could find joy in improving maybe you have lots of essay assignments at school yeah sure the topic may be boring but you can at least focus on doing the writing well maybe you manage a small team at work so you can pick up a few books on leadership and develop that maybe you love a good coffee so you find a new Brewing method and make that taste really nice the possibilities are endless and they're exciting so get out there and find what works for you I have two more smaller tips that help me progress in many areas without feeling overwhelmed the first one addresses the source of the problem it reveals where this desire to do everything might actually come from in the first place yes being curious and hungry to learn is part of it but that's not the problem the real issue is shiny object syndrome starting the next thing just because it's different and refreshing and that's just a distraction from the Pursuits that matter the most to you and looking back into my past I can see a subtle but disturbing influence coming from my phone and I can guarantee this has happened to you because whenever I scroll through YouTube shorts or Instagram reals I end up just feeling disappointed with myself and not for the reason you'd think the time wasting but something completely different instead I feel a sense of shame because I have tricked my mind into thinking that I'm not doing enough and that I have to keep doing more and more and more for example I might see a cool video on soap making and I think to myself damn that's cool I wish I could do that and then 2 seconds later I see someone making me from scratch in the living room again that's amazing that's absolutely fantastic I wish I could do that and maybe 2 minutes later I see someone showing off their notebook and it has these beautiful pencil drawings in ultra realistic detail of these Renaissance statues and sculptures and again this is fantastic within the space of maybe 10 minutes you've been exposed to results of years maybe Decades of practice and experience in like 50 different crafts and hobbies it's inspiring don't get me wrong but there's Dark Side to it you might be left feeling inadequate feeling that what you're doing is not enough and that you should be doing everything you're seeing the worst part is it's totally irrational and you and I know that you have your own skills ones that are valuable to the world and just because you don't share the same 50 skills you see online that doesn't make your skills any less valuable and I have to learn to block out this feeling of jealousy almost the jealousy that I can't do what they do I want other people's creative success to be motivation for my own not a form of sabotage so just keep that mind the next time you scroll through social media my last tip fixes this problem from the opposite end and if you combine it with every other principle on this list then you've created yourself I think a bulletproof plan for reaching that ideal of the the polymath the renaissance man if you were tired of harsh truths then I'm sorry cuz there's one more and I promise it's the last one following your interests will not always be fun there will be moments of annoyance struggle and burnouts and this is true for everything because Mastery requires that you overcome challenges to grow you must struggle you must learn and you must overcome things that were holding you back I first saw this graph from Alex hosi the famous business guy and it describes the stages of emotion that a entrepreneur goes through when he starts a business and this stuck to me ever since I saw it because you can apply this to your hobbies as well the first step is uninformed optimism you see this new skill and you're excited it looks fun and you dive into it with all this confidence in The Next Step things get darker you start to realize this is not all fun in games and things might just get harder from here this step is in formed pessimism the novelty wears off and you realize this is harder than it looks I'm going to have to put a lot more effort in than I previously thought and don't worry because it gets worse in step three you've entered the valley of Despair when you enter a new interest this will be the closest you get to your breaking point in the valley of Despair all you can see are the negative things and you realize this is really damn difficult again you're at a Crossroads at this point many people will quit and they'll look to the next hobby so they can start that whole cycle all over again however if you choose to stick with it and push past that dip you enter step four informed optimism and from here things start to get better because you've seen the dark side but you also know that with effort and consistency you can push past that and you can achieve greatness alongside the struggle and you also see things start to pay off and that's where you get the motivation to continue until you reach step five which is achievement you achieved something and in this case that's a healthy set of skills that you can be proud of and that's it that is everything and that was a long video so thank you for sticking around it's everything I've learned in my journey to do lots of different things but keep it realistic and not sabotage myself in the process the treasure is in the balance of it of course I still have a long way to go in my own journey and I'm hoping that at least one thing from this list can help you in that same journey and of course I'd love to hear your experience on this maybe some advice that you would give to someone on a similar path or maybe some experiences you had with staying focused the comments are open my emails are open and thank you for watching

Channel: Odysseas

Views: 889,424

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Id: -AdXIC44b7Q

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024