Be Visual: Paths & Priorities
Hey! Elliott here.
I hope you had a great week.
I’m trying out a Saturday delivery this time around. Wednesdays and Thursdays just haven’t worked for me, so I hope Saturdays work out better for you too!
Here are two ideas I’ll be thinking about throughout the weekend in preparation for the week ahead:
What you do with your time is more significant than how hard you work on it:
I got this idea from Justin Welsh, and I think it’s not something that is widely talked about. You can indeed spend a significant amount of time & effort in an endeavor that won’t get you to your goal or wasn’t what you thought it would be.
And you would learn a lot, I’m sure. So some folks would say that you can’t deem it as a waste of your time. But if you had put that same effort and time into the right things, you would be much better off.
This is a dangerous idea to think about as it feeds into my “shiny object syndrome.” Anytime I discover a new thing I find cool, I have difficulty saying no to it to stay consistent on the path I’m already on.
So how do you determine if something is a distraction or a better path?
One example that came to mind from my experience was my venture into UI/UX design. I haven’t completely written this profession off the table, but it was something I spent a significant amount of time learning and wound up deciding it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do at the time.
It’s a fine line between knowing that this thing, whatever it is, isn’t the right path for you and sticking out to something consistently for a long enough time to see progress & a return on investment.
I, for one, am glad I decided to step away from UI/UX design as I found the thing I love to do: explain ideas visually. I think I was lucky & blessed to find something I enjoy so much. It’s the first thing I have ever consistently done for more than 12 months.
It’s just not the priority right now:
I am the excuse master. Ask my wife.
I have excuses for my excuses.
And so it was a mindblowing moment for me when I realized that my excuses are just my way of saying that something was just not a priority for me at that moment.
There are only 24 hours in a day, after all. And a lot of it is spent sleeping (I wish. I have toddlers and a baby who stagger their screaming & crying).
So with that said, when I get upset with myself for not hitting the gym one day, I now realize that I placed more importance on the other things I did that day. The gym was just not my priority.
And those things that take priority can very much be productive or a total waste of time (i.e., scrolling through Instagram).
This is helpful in a sense because now, when I do catch myself mindlessly scrolling through social media, I think to myself that I have prioritized this mindless activity over things that I find important…like the gym.
At that point, I put the phone down and decide to use my time differently. That can be reading a book, working on my side hustle, or going to the gym.
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See you next week!
Have a great one!
Elliott