Should We Be Juggling Multiple Priorities?

Hello to the 27 of you here,

If you’re new here, you can start by reading the first post, or maybe by checking out where Equal Opportunity is headed.

I realised that so far I haven’t yet delivered on the ‘productivity tips’ promise I made when you signed up.

After you read today’s email, please vote:

I have a love-hate relationship with juggling multiple priorities at once.

Let me explain.

I need to focus on different projects, otherwise I get bored.

However, to realise this and find balance, I had to understand I have a degree of shiny objects syndrome(SOS).

SOS is being distracted by new and exciting opportunities. Similar to a kid that has lots of toys—he wants to try them all. More toys equals more distractions. In my case, more ideas equals more distractions.

So I cannot work on a single project, as I would get bored, and I have a tendency to be distracted by new projects. Great. I think many people experience this. I know Leonardo da Vinci did. (not that this helps anyhow)

In the past, when I was getting exciting ideas, I wanted to work on them straight away. I would work on them for a while, then something else would come along, and the cycle would repeat.

To combat this, I’ve developed a framework.

1. Whenever I have an idea, I add it to my Ideas Tank.

2. I then let it maturate — usually more than 14 days.

3. If I still find it interesting, I’ll do some research on competitors.

4. I’ll then assess my capability to do the job.

5. If all the above are satisfied, I might attempt to do it.

You can access this as a Notion template here. This gives me a sense of control, a sense of completion, and closure.

Finding time to act on these ideas is another aspect.

In between law school, newsletters, job applications, sports, work, and life in general, there’s little time. I found out that If I want to get things done, I need to be very strict with my time, so I try not to lose any.

It’s very easy to lose time. Especially on social media. These large corporations hire attention engineers. Their job is to make us addicted to their platform. If we spend more time there, they can show us more ads and as a result they make more money.

So at one end of this equation there are the best minds in the world working day and night to make and keep us addicted. And at the other end there are people like you and me, induced into believing we can control the time spent on social media.

The joke’s on us if we believe that.The second we open a social media app, our attention is hooked through dopamine hacking. Dopamine gives us feelings of pleasure and happiness.  So we scroll, and scroll, and scroll.

Our brain has a ready pool of dopamine used to create the highs. But by constantly using social media, the pool gets depleted quicker. As a result, we scroll some more, but find it less and less rewarding.

The problem with this is that we need more and more stimulation. So we keep going back. Outside of social media, things that used to excite us don’t excite us anymore. We start feeling depressed, unmotivated, and fatigued.

My solution?

I realised I’m not smarter than a group of attention engineers. So I don’t take any chances. I don’t use any social media apart from LinkedIn, which I use to promote Equal Opportunity. We can also argue that the phone is addictive too, but hey, I want to live in society.

Scroll back up to vote please.

Talk Friday,

George