Green Where You Water It

It’s that paralysis. You know that you have a finite amount of time on this Earth. You don’t want to waste it. What if you spend it on the wrong things? When there’s no guarantee that book you’re writing is going to pan out or that business you’ve been thinking about starting is going to be profitable in the long-term, how can you choose where to put your time?

There’s so many winding roads up ahead, which one is the right one?

Yes, you can test it out. Place limits on how much time or resources you put into something before scrapping it because it’s not performing as you would expect. Then you’d face the thought that maybe if you had kept it going, it would have worked out. Because sometimes it’s just a matter of keeping at one thing until it works. But again, if you want success, and there’s no guarantee of it regardless of how much you put in, how do you choose which venture to pursue? How do you stay motivated when you’re riddled with self-doubt or second guesses?

But you know that if you don’t do anything, you will have wasted time anyway, the thing you were dreading the most. So you would start on something, but the doubts would creep in or all the criticisms of how it would never work. They were valid criticisms so they held power. But everything has a chance of not working out. It’s deciding what to do regardless of that basic risk inherent in everything that was the problem.

Yes, you can use passion as a compass. If you do what you love to do, you’ll keep going longer and eventually hit success (maybe).

But what if you’re multi-passionate (i.e., your passions keep changing)? You might delve deep into one topic for a couple of weeks and then do a 180 for the next couple of months. What’s worse is that there is no cute quirky cohesiveness, no common thread to tie it all together. It’s just dependent on who you are as a person. And unfortunately (or fortunately?) who you are as a person can’t neatly fit into a cookie cutter box. And so then what?

You could resign yourself to simply existing without succeeding or knowing that it will take longer because you’re not focusing on one thing.

But that’s not an option you want to consider.

The solution seems to be a strategy that I was doing in the past when my goal was just exploring things and learning what I can from each experience. Plus something I realized when I asked myself, “If I had a $100,000 dollars, what I would be doing right now?”

My answer: For one year, I wouldn’t be worrying about focusing my efforts or choosing which road to take. I would just chase the rabbit down the hole. I would keep learning what I wanted to learn. I would keep obsessively watching videos about RV/Van life or finance stuff or Hogwarts Legacy (that last one isn’t going to get me anywhere in life, but I’ll allow free reign for one year). I would continue learning about AI and SEO. I would work on learning more Power Query tricks to level up my career a bit more. Keep researching boring businesses like laundromats or vending machines. (Though I think the vending machine thing is fun, not boring.) I would continue working on my story and I would continue dreaming.

Basically, I would do whatever I wanted to do.

Looking back on this site, it’s the posts I did with a lot of heart (where I was following my whim) that actually ended up performing the best. I don’t know why I don’t take that as a sign to just keep doing what I love. Maybe because I think there’s another level I can get to if I refined myself. But it kind of takes the pride out of the work I do. I might be more refined, but then I would be like everything else I see out there. If I followed my whims, even if it fails, at least I can still take pride in how it turned out and most likely will have enjoyed working on it.

But from time to time, I want to have succeeded. And I haven’t yet and I don’t know if I ever will. What avenue should I go down? Every road has its thorns with a chance of success, but no guarantee of it. As someone who’s conservative and likes playing it on the safe side, what should I invest my time in that work out to be worthwhile in the end?

Put another way, how do I guarantee success?

Separate the outcome from the experience and assign it a character goal instead.

With anything you work on, you’re guaranteed to change yourself. Repairing a kitchen cabinet even though you’d rather eat ice cream? You’ve changed yourself. Writing that book even though you don’t know if it’ll ever do well? You’ve changed yourself. Learning to cook at home versus going out to eat all the time? You’ve changed yourself.

Every thing you do, no matter what you choose to do changes you. You’re guaranteed to change yourself with every action you take, sometimes even with every thought you think.

If that’s the case, then you’re already kind of ahead of the game. You know you will definitely change, now it’s just a matter of choosing what character trait you want to change. Want to learn to be more disciplined? More focused? More adventurous?

Choose whatever you want with this because unlike choosing external goals, you can’t go wrong with choosing a trait to develop because they feed into each other. If you develop one, you’ll likely have small gains on the others. For example, if you pick up a hiking project to learn how to be more adventurous, you’ll be exercising your discipline muscles too because I’m pretty sure you’re going to face some internal resistance with hiking up that pretty steep looking hill. But if you push through, you’ll have not only gained adventure points but discipline points too.

And through it all, you’ll be working on your life’s purpose. I believe our only purpose in life is to get to the end of our lives as better humans than how we started. All the external stuff will take care of itself if your internal stuff is worked on.

So guarantee your success by assigning character goals to each project you take on. That way, you’ll succeed no matter what happens.

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What character trait do you want to develop next? What project will you choose to get there?