When I was growing up, Army recruitment posters used to read, “We get more done before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.” I used to love that saying, but looking back as an adult, it sounds terrible. Who wants to live their life that way? And when am I supposed to have time for my morning doughnut and cup of coffee?
But the Army had a point. Being productive is an important skill, especially if you want to succeed in the entertainment industry. The problem is that most people don’t understand there’s a big difference between getting a lot of things done quickly and getting the right things done, period.
Action without focus accomplishes nothing.
It took me years to learn this lesson. I was all about making a massive to-do list every morning and then setting out to conquer it. I rarely did, so the stuff that didn’t get done would roll over into the next day’s list, which in turn would roll over into the next day’s list, and so on and so on. As a result, I was doing a lot of stuff every day but I wasn’t really getting anything done.
(I actually got a little winded writing that last paragraph—imagine what it was like living that way!)
It took a while to get my act
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