You know those people who never quite move beyond their glorious high school football days? I could’ve been one of those people who was stuck in the past and never quite moved beyond the glory of my athletic career as a international calibre beach volleyball player.

I don’t blame people who end up stuck there – it’s an amazing experience to master something and compete at the highest level!

Pursuing Mastery in Multiple Areas

People who excel in sport definitely achieve mastery. It can be hard and scary to let go of that feeling of being the best of the best (and seriously, who would really want to?).

The thing is…I’ve always known that I walk to a different beat. I’ve always had a million things on the go and been driven to excel on a number of levels – athletically, academically, and professionally. I don’t judge others who aren’t wired the same way – this ability to pursue mastery in many different areas as possible is both a gift and a curse.

In thinking back on the experiences I’ve had in mastering various things, I realize that I‘ve become a master of building skills in different aspects of my life at the same time. This might seem contradictory to the things experts, like Malcolm Gladwell, say about mastery requiring 10,000 hours or practice and a singular, almost obsessive, focus.

To clarify, I absolutely subscribe to the idea that mastery requires both 10,000 hours of practice and obsessive focus.  I’m someone who is committed to putting in the time and to pursuing my passions with obsessive focus. I became a high performing indoor and beach volleyball player through years of practice and obsessive focus. I finished my law degree, masters of law, and PhD in law through years of study and obsessive focus.

Obsessively Focus on (More Than) One Thing At a Time

The thing is that I’ve always obsessively focused on more than one thing at a time. What this means is that I obsessively focus on the activity that I prioritize at the time I’m doing it. I also spend a ton of time thinking and planning about that activity while I’m not doing it. At the same time though, my days are packed full of various activities that I’m trying to master.

So when I was competing in beach volleyball at a national and international level, I was also completing my law degree and masters of law.

A typical day would go something like this:

• I would go to the gym before class and workout for about 1.5 hours then I would attend my law classes.
• Right after class, I would drive down to the beach to go to my two-hour beach volleyball practice.
• All my “down time” was spent doing my required readings and studying for my law school exams. I had a well-developed system for studying which included 45 minutes of complete focus with 15 minute breaks (the breaks were productive breaks of course – I would take a bath, make a meal, or do some dishes). I guess it was my riff on the Pomodoro technique and it worked! Sometimes I would spend up to 12 hours per day studying in this way (when I wasn’t practicing or competing in volleyball).
• At bedtime and in the morning when I awoke, I would visualize performing different skills for beach volleyball.

During this period of my life, I was obsessively focused on beach volleyball when I was playing or preparing for beach volleyball and I was obsessively focused on law school when I was doing my law school work.

Walking to My Own Beat

I recently met with one of my business coaches, Jon Nastor. When I told Jon that in addition to launching an online business and rewriting my dissertation to submit as a book manuscript, I was also writing my first novel, he looked surprised and joked: “why don’t you write a novel about a woman who focuses on one thing at a time and becomes uber successful?” I replied with a wink: “or why don’t I write a novel about a woman who does a million things at the same time and becomes uber successful?”  Then we both laughed.

Now you’re probably thinking: “Kirsten, how does this thought stream fit into your post about focusing on one thing at a time to get things done?”  Great question… I’ve been struggling with the contradiction between these two ideas for quite some time.  So here’s what I have come up with:

• It’s important to understand how much time you really have in a day to commit to the various activities you want to achieve.  As someone who works full time and goes to bed relatively early, I have very little time to commit to all of my side projects so although I’m focusing on many at a time, during specific periods of time (several month blocks), I’m only focusing on one during that period.

• The type of activity you have to do will impact your rate of progress on your big goal, especially if that type of activity is the same as in other areas of your life.  Here’s an example: for several years, my full time job was as a research lawyer working on in-depth research related to law reform (so suggesting how legislation and policies could change to eliminate inequality for particular groups of people).  While I was doing this job, I made very little progress on my PhD.  My full-time work was researching and writing all day and it was the the same type of activity as I would have to do in my PhD and I was tired by the time I got home.  When I switched jobs to a lawyer job that focused on small deliverables that were more template-based, I started to make much quicker progress on my PhD.  So the key to making progress depends on variation between the type of full time work you do and the type of work required to make progress on your other big things.

• Finally, the stage of life you are in matters as well.  The routine I described above worked well for me before I was married and before I became a mother.  Now that I’m a mother, I highly prioritize my family time.  As a result, my available time is even more restricted to make progress on these various projects. So in this stage of life, I have to accept that I’ll make much slower progress than I’m used to in accomplishing my big goals.  It has taken me some time (and regular reminders to be patient)…but I have gotten better at tempering my expectations and being kind to myself about the length of time it takes me to achieve my next big thing.

I realize that most productivity coaches and experts say that you need to focus on one thing at time. For me, though, the best recipe is to focus on several things obsessively at a time.

Obsessively focusing on more than one thing at a time keeps me excited about all the possibilities ahead of me. It might not lead to mastery in any one thing at the same pace but as I reflect on the goals I have set in my life and achieved (and some of the ones I haven’t yet achieved), I don’t think focusing on mastering many things at the same time has slowed me down too much.  The shifting of focus from one obsession to another has often helped me to take a break, get some distance from the other area I am focusing on and create space for creative growth in the other areas.

Mastering several things at once is definitely not for everyone… Do you think this could work for you?  Please post a comment below and let us know!

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