Introverts, Multiple Projects and Why You Might Want To Rethink Following Your Passion
😵💫🫣 How Do You Know When It's Time To Stop?
🤔 Thoughts for the week
It's been a funny week, and the other night, I popped out to a networking event in Dartford. It was excellent, but halfway through, I realised that whilst I didn't want to miss the opportunity of meeting all these lovely new people, I needed to stop talking.
Here's a picture I took from the introvert’s corner.
How do you know when you need to stop?
I have little signs, some in my body and others in my brain. A funny sore tongue indicates I may be heading for burnout. A bit achy in my legs is another. Brain flip-flopping all over the place and the strange urge to sit in a corner or under the desk are also good clues. I keep opening and closing tabs on the computer. The peculiar one is how stuff stops working. There's a slow unravelling of my tech. Grammarly won't work, pages won't load, stuff won't download or upload, the blue-tooth mouse detaches itself from the computer, and the phone freezes.
Is the tech conspiring with the universe to tell me to stop working?
I've learned that I can't work through this; positive affirmations don't work. No amount of standing in front of the bathroom mirror telling myself I'm not knackered will cut it. If I'm tired, then I'm tired, and there is no other option than to own the truth and go with it.
What does sometimes work, and I'm trying it out right now, is writing. Simple writing about thoughts and feelings. Nothing complex. No equations, just ideas as they crop up.
I think I'm invincible, but sometimes you need to take a break.
🧑🏻🎓What Have I Learned This Week?
That it's ok to have lots of projects on the go. For some people (me), it's how we work at optimum productivity. I just wish I'd known that 20 years ago. How many projects have you got on the go? One, two, twenty-two? Up until this week, I've believed the productivity experts who say success depends on focusing on one project; don't spread yourself too thin and how you can't juggle stuff. I've been working with that view and under the impression that anything I did was doomed to fail as I was tackling too many things at once.
The problem is that working on just one thing has never worked for me.
Try as I might, new projects keep popping up. Have you ever seen that village fete game where you must bash the rats back into the hole? That's my brain with projects.
So, I switch between trying to suppress my ideas or put my projects off for the future and juggling everything I've got on the go. The problem is it's tricky to function at your best when you believe you're broken because you can't focus on one thing.
This week I saw a brand new view in a book called Joy of Business by Simone Milasas. Simone talks about people who flourish when they have multiple projects and how some people, people like me, are at their most productive when they almost have too much to do.
It's incredible how much your effectiveness grows when you're not operating from the viewpoint of inevitable failure.
So, what have I learned?So, what have I learned?
🧐 Don't listen to other people I think might know better than me. They don't.
🥸 If I can't fit into the mould - that’s a good thing and I need to find the way that works for me. Trust me.
Who wants to fit in with everyone else anyway?
📖 This Week’s Book
I might have to go with the recommendation above - Joy Of Business, by Simone Milasas. It's also got some solid business information about your numbers and the softer stuff, such as how you and your brain function. It's an easy read with some real nuggets.
This Week’s Quote
This one comes from ‘Dissapointing Affirmations’ on Facebook.
It just made me chuckle and I hope it makes you laugh as well. Of course, there is just a little snippety of truth in there 🤣
Look Good Feel Good
If you want to make a change, you must make the space to make it happen.
Every day I mean to do Yoga, go on my trampette (it's good for my bones), and do weights workouts.
Every day, every damned day, it gets forgotten.
The reason it wasn't happening was because I had yet to create the space - space in the diary and the space in the house. Doing Yoga meant moving chairs around, and rebounding needed me to wrestle the trampette from behind a unit and move rugs around to lay it flat on the floor. What a pain and a brilliant reason to leave it until tomorrow.
So we did zoning. We combined our two home offices into one and used the now-empty space for Yoga, exercise and relaxation. It's so easy now to pop in and do a 10-minute stretch or bounce between focus work sessions.
It honours our health and vitality by showing the universe that we intend to improve.
📓 Thoughts and Words 📝
Follow Your Passion
"Passion" is a phrase commonly used in business and start-up literature. It often appears in emotive titles such as "Passions into Profits."
But is it a great idea to start a business following your passion? Considering the word's origins, then probably not.
In the dictionary, passion is about a ‘‘strong and barely controllable emotion. It is also assigned to the story of Jesus - in phrases like 'the passion of Christ'.
Is a barely controllable emotion a sound basis for starting a business, or anything for that matter?
How can you make reasoned judgments based on a barely controllable emotion?
If you don't feel passionate about your business, take comfort in the fact that you are making sensible decisions to help it grow and aim for fun, joy and magic.
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