Once you’ve identified your art – that thing you do – you have to let go of, or reduce the time you invest in the rest.*  Unless your art is bringing intensity to many projects.

Herein lies a problem.  Humans like to keep their options open – maybe old lizard brain is keeping an escape route clear – but the result can be we never really commit to what we really want to, and ought to, focus on.

Whether we simply like to do lots of things, or we feel pressured into doing many things well, it’s often leaves us living an unfocused life, wasting energy, diverting it from what we must do.

I had to smile when I found myself doing this earlier.  I’m usually reading seven or eight books at the same time – each offering a different perspective on what I’m thinking about or working with people on.  Today I found myself wondering whether I’d miss some important insight if I didn’t read this book or that, so I dithered.

Dan Ariely suggests, to get unstuck: ‘take into account the consequences of not deciding,’ so I stuck with reading his book describe this very thing.

The catches my attention because I find myself wondering a lot about how people can overcome obstacles to do what their lives are saying they should do.  So, when it comes to our art, it’s important to identify the things which sap our energy and stop doing them, (when this isn’t an option, it’s important to use our art to manage these things creatively – turning them into a small project for what we do best, but we mustn’tt try and turn these things into our art).  One of the guys behind StrengthsFinder, Marcus Buckingham, wrote a whole book 285 pages long to help us get this.

(*This isn’t the same thing as feeding your art through a wide range of resources, interests, and curiosities.)