How to determine what’s important, and what you should drop
Throughout high school, I’ve racked up many achievements and leadership positions related to school. Every year, though—I’ve decided to give it all up to focus.
- Sophomore Year: Sophomore Representative to School Council (and the year before as well) — could have done junior year, decided to quit
- Junior Year: Debate Club President — could have won President again, but decided to quit
- Junior Year: Convention Coordinator at the Northeast State of the JSA — could have campaigned for the top position as Governor, but decided to quit
All decisions, all about giving up positions of authority and prestige up, after working very hard to get to them. I’ve found that I sometimes regret these decisions, and whether they were the best to make.
The Problem with Focusing
The main problem with focus is that focus usually means dropping other things. When we’re talking about things you’ve worked hard to achieve—positions of leadership or otherwise—it’s hard to let go.
However, the things that you do that don’t line up with what your real focus (and areas of development) will act like leeches on your time and energy. In many cases, that’s more detrimental than hanging on. When you’re at that point, it’s important to know how to rotate your focus ring with precision.
Areas of Development
I’ve identified three areas of development that I’d like to see from everything that I voluntarily work on.
- personal development — helping me work with teams, people in general, getting work done
- social development — chances of meeting new and valuable people in the process of work
- college and résumé/career development — chances to improve my chances in college and in my career
- extrapersonal benefit — helping others, including those who can’t help me back (a life goal)
Think about your own areas of development. Like above, write down the area and a description on why it’s important to you to develop.
Questions I Asked Myself
Indeed, they weren’t easy decisions to make—each of them required a lot of thinking beforehand to determine whether they were the best decisions to make. They were based on:
- If I continued, how much workload (time)Â would I have to spend on it?
- Will this workload affect my ability to do work that I really, really want to focus on? (entrepreneurship)
- Is continuing an acceptable sacrifice for the areas of development?
- Is quitting an acceptable sacrifice for focus?
- Is this really something that contributes to my life goals and areas of development? How?
Ask these questions to yourself with regard to your areas of development. Is it something you’d like to still pursue?
Through experience, I’ve seen that maintaining focus is important. It has affected my hard-earned positions of leadership, but it’s important. A tough choice to make, but in the end, one that is very valuable.
At the moment I working on finishing school. In a nutshell I’m just getting by. Like a lot of people I’m not a huge fan of school. I’d rather be doing something fun. However school’s one of those things I want to finish. I found out that I did in fact have a choice whether or not I wanted to finish highschool(contrary to what my parents tell me). My parents tell me that I need school, my oxygen supply mainly depends on it and unless I have it it’s impossible to survive outside these walls. When I started educating myself I found out that the real problem wasn’t the amount of formal education but self education. Simple things such as self-limiting habits drive us down while we blame education. If we end up working a career that requires a degree, anyone can get one. Not everyone has the mindset though. The I’m too old/too young/sick/stupid/it’s too hard/etc excuses kick in.
I’ve decided what I want. I just need to get closer to getting what I want. And I can’t spend too much time doing things that aren’t important or aren’t contributing to my goals. I’ve made myself familiar with the 80/20 rule. It’s similar to what you introduced here. Books have been written about it. But you can find out what it is in a few quick Google searches. Really made me think about where my time is going since being time conscious is super important.
Anyways great post!:) You have what it takes for success and I hope you’ll continue to focus on your goals!:)
Have a great one!
Clinton
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Also maybe consider getting a gf?
That’s too difficult. 🙂
Hello,
Just wanted to introduce myself.. Im Sean… glad to be here! Does anyone have any recommendations / advice on using this site?