Deceived And Divided

The Daily Stoic for April 3rd. “Deceived and divided”.

“Circumstances are what deceive us—you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 45.6

There’s so much in today’s stoic meditation, that I think I’d need a whole book to write about it. But I’ll be brief.

It’s true that circumstances are what ultimately deceive us. We are sometimes our own enemies, or more concretely, our inability to find out what we truly want in life and stick to that path.

This is specially true for us, solopreneurs. I don’t know about you, but I usually suffer from the shinny object syndrome. I have written about it in the past in the post Gain Focus By Learning To Say No To Yourself.

In that post, I promised that I would try to focus on just one thing, or at least learn to say no to those new shinny objects that are offered to me. And yet, yesterday I was precisely thinking about how I have more than I can handle, and that I should be closing some of these projects.

The Deceived And Divided Solopreneur

I would go as far as to say that you need to focus on just one thing. As today’s passage affirms:

“Business executives try to pursue two different strategies at the same time—straddling it’s called—and they are shocked when they succeed at neither.”

That’s absolutely true, and probably the thing I struggle with most. Yes, it’s good to avoid having all your eggs in one basket, as they say. However, you should approach your projects one at a time. Otherwise, you will dilute your energy. That’s the perfect recipe for disaster.

This short post pretends, thus, to be a call to action. If you are anything like me, my suggestion is: focus on one thing at a time, don’t try to do everything, don’t try to be a superhero. Focus in doing one thing amazingly and, when you have it running and have automated it, switch to another. Avoid the temptation to do everything.

I will definitely double down my efforts to achieve that.

Conclusion

Today’s Daily Stoic, “Deceived and divided”, certainly hit a nerve on me. I usually struggle with focusing on just one project. It’s hard for me to say “no” to new, interesting things.

Thus, I usually end up punching well above my weight. My suggestion: focus your energy on one thing. Stick to your path. Believe in what you do, and avoid the temptation to jump to other things.