Why It’s OK Not to Focus On One Thing

Screw traditional advice — become multi-passionate.

Photo by Drew Graham on Unsplash

Most self-development advice revolves around the fundamental idea: you achieve success by focusing on a single task. This makes sense, it sounds right, and I’ve been saying it myself a number of times.

But — as any advice, this one has its limitations.

It’s an old joke that most entrepreneurs have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). But why?

Entrepreneurs are people who create something out of nothing by assembling separate parts. They create something that wasn’t there before.

Entrepreneurs are artists.

When people say you’ve got to focus on a single task, they usually refer to the problems of dispersed attention — you do ten things, and end up not becoming successful at any of them.

Focus — is an essential element to “success.”

But how can you assemble unrelated parts, if all you do is focus on one thing?

And what is this “success” that focus is an essential element of, anyway?

The Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur

I first heard this term from Marie Forleo. In her book (Everything is Figureoutable), she called…