Your mountain is waiting

Between my laptop, snacks, gym gear, and personal items, many bags travel to and from work with me each day. The end of the day typically introduces additional paraphernalia, grocery bags, for example. Each evening is a balancing act, but at the end of a long day when I'm hungry and tired, I am rarely open to taking multiple trips. 

One night this week, my usual set of bags was accompanied by a paper bag holding a coffee maker and glass carafe. Starving, I turned myself into a hat rack of sorts, determined to make only one trip. I was experimenting with different orientations when suddenly, without warning, the coffee-maker-bag broke. Though the coffee maker escaped unscathed (thank goodness, else this post would have been a eulogy for my coffee maker), the glass carafe shattered into a million pieces. I just stood there, staring, as I listened to the sound of breaking glass echo through the parking lot. I can't even say I was in disbelief because, well, it's exactly what I should have expected to happen. Well, that's that. I put everything back in my trunk, went upstairs to get a broom, came downstairs, swept up the glass, then proceeded to make three more trips back and forth for all my bags. 

Finally unpacked and in the shower, I couldn't help but think about that breaking point. That final jenga piece that sent everything crashing down. There was only one bag I had needed in the immediate, and yet, I wasn't open to leaving anything behind even temporarily.

Last week during our team check-in, my group discussed the applications of a recent article on lessons from Steve Jobs' leadership. The article dedicates sizable real estate to the idea of focus. If you only know one thing about Apple, it's probably the fact that the company exudes focus. Doing a few things extremely well. As Jobs explained it, "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do." My team, which of late has been pursuing a model of throwing a whole bunch of experiments at the wall to see what sticks, started reflecting on the idea of focus. We're starting to consider the value in choosing just one or two projects and pouring our creativity and dedication into them. A radical change from our previous goal to have as many lean, scrappy experiments in market as possible. Time will tell which method is more successful for innovation, but my hypothesis is that focus is going to win. 

Through high school, I was involved in a variety of different activities. Probably too many. At that age, I simply didn't know how to cut activities out of my life. I didn't know how to prioritize and how to separate my interests and choices from how they would be perceived by others. It was in college that I started to understand that if you want to excel in something, if you want to immerse yourself in something, you have to put in the time. And there is not enough time to be truly immersed in everything. 

I would not call myself an expert, but the key to all of this as I see it now, is to focus on what you want to do, rather than everything you have to give up to get there. Because in the end, any large commitment in one realm requires some amount of sacrifice in another (and of course, it's up to you to determine whether the sacrifice is worth it). Maybe not forever, but at least for brief periods time spurts. This is not easy at all. Be it in my lighter bag-example or that of my high school hobbies, it's almost impossible not to think of what you are giving up, even if you really want the alternative. 

Over-ambitiousness offers such a wonderful feeling of invincibility that we blind ourselves to how unsustainable it is. Its only at times when you're kneeling on the floor of a parking garage, sweeping up pieces of glass that you get some perspective. 

Life is all about doing whatever you need to do to be whoever you want to be. But you don't need to do everything out there. I'll end with a quote by Jean Monnet that I absolutely love:  "Everybody is ambitious. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or ambitious to do."