Lasers vs Flashlights
The world is full of light sources, and plenty of good uses for various types. You need to search for a wanted person from the helicopter? Spotlight will work just fine. You want to illuminate a room, 100 Watts of incandescence will do you just fine. You want to find your way through the woods, use a flashlight. You want to cut steel? Get your ass a laser.
The difference between a laser and any of the other sources is focus. You get those photons into an aligned focused state and powerful things can happen. You can cut things, read data off a disc, annoy the hell out of everyone in a movie theater, you name it.
Real change, real success, only comes as a product of extreme focused attention. If you are trying to succeed at 7 or 8 different things at once, odds are you’re going to get a handful of flashlights – illuminating some of the things going on, but not really doing anything powerful. Focus everything on one project, give it your entire attention, every waking moment you can sustain. It’s not a 100% guarantee to succeed, but odds are that you’ll get a laser every once in a while that changes your world.
Do one thing, and do it 100%. If it isn’t worth everything you have, then is it worth doing?
This post inspired by Joshua Strebel’s recent Gangplank Academy Brownbag.
That’s the key to business success as quoted by “Orville Redenbacher”, “Do one thing and do it better than anyone else.” He set out to create the world’s best popcorn by creating his own corn hybrid and ended up with the best selling popcorn brand in the U.S.