The brilliant Hayes Carll one sang these words, a sentiment that I find holding more and more true by the day:
There ain’t enough of me to go around.
Of course, Mr. Carll was singing about a different thing altogether. Hayes loves women.
To each his own, I suppose?
But these days, there really isn’t enough of me to go around. There is so much to be done with Stry.us, and so little time. This project lasts four months. Two are almost over.
Two! Where the hell did all the time go?
I serve so many roles at Stry.us. I lead. I organize. I build. I teach. I report. I listen. I generally keep us from going bankrupt or ending up in a court of law.
This is a lot for a single human. To get everything done, I either need more time or more Dans.
Or the secret third option: I need to focus.
I need to focus when my reporters talk to me. I need to focus when I report a story. I need to focus when I’m filing expenses.
Focus means that I need to look people in the eye. Focus means that I need to stop trying to hold conference calls with a soccer game on in the background.
Focus means occasionally putting down the laptop.
Yes, I have to multi-task. But what that really means for me is that while I have to accomplish many different tasks — all those different Dans need to take on their own tasks within the course of a single day — in a single moment, I need to find the will to take every bit of me and throw it into a single thing.
And then I need to find a way to finish that task, find the next task and throw myself fully into that.
I cannot give all I want to give to this project until I learn to focus.