How to eat an elephant

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It can seem impossible to get ahead in the world of hustle culture, burnout, social media, and endless inputs. And for many people, it is impossible to gain traction. But, some people have seemed to not notice this struggle, and instead, they continue to produce value and impact the world at an unrelenting pace.

There must be a fundamental difference if some people are paralyzed and some are unstopped. The unstoppable must know something that the rest of humanity doesn’t. What do they know?

When you feel burnt out and lose focus, your mind will continually look for distractions. It will do its utmost to search for the path of least resistance and immediate gratification. We all need to acknowledge that almost everything will become difficult sooner or later. The way to keep going is by focusing on the one most important task at a time.

To keep going, you need to be understanding of yourself and be okay with the fact that you cannot give 100% effort 100% of the time. There will always be distractions and fires to put out. There will always be a reason to do the easy and immediately gratifying work. But, as leaders and producers, our overall output of hard and important work is what matters.

So often, what holds us back from having what we truly want is our inability to say no to distractions and fires. As a result, we avoid working on the hard and most important priorities and instead procrastinate and distract ourselves with low-value shallow work. As a result, we do things we should do instead of doing the one thing we must do.

We procrastinate by checking our emails, cleaning our house, and finishing the number 2, 3, and 4 tasks on our to-do list. We do everything except for the number 1 item on our list. This procrastination happens until the critical deadline hits, and we can no longer put it off. When we have no choice but to do the actual work.

What happens is always the same; we do a tremendous amount of work in an incredibly short time. However, as many students know, we only leave enough time for the first draft; but, good work does not appear on the first draft; it occurs after the 5th or the 10th, or even on the 50th revision.

Steven Pressfield talks about this in his book Turning Pro, the professional shows up and does the work, while the amateur waits for inspiration.

As professionals, we strive to produce great work. And to create great work, we need to show up and put in the effort, day after day, year after year. We need to stay focused on what actually matters and do our utmost to say no to the distractions, especially the distractions that we think we should do. A secret that most people don’t realize is that most self-development and productivity hacks are just removing distractions and focusing on the one most important task.

The most successful people say no to far more than they say yes to, which keeps them focused on their mission.

Busyness is not a virtue. It is a lack of priorities and an excuse. By focusing on our most vital tasks and saying no to the little things that do not matter, we can create more value in the world by doing less overall work.

Just like you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and you create value in the world by focusing on one vital task at a time.