Cultivate One Thing, Not Everything

Read time: 5 min

Jump to Section:

• ➣ The Trap of Divided Attention
• ➣ How to Choose Where to Begin
• ➣ Keep a Steadying Stone Nearby
• ➣ What Happens Next

You've got a journal for gratitude going, and another for shadow work you started and haven't returned to. Maybe there's an alarm reminding you to practice breathwork for five minutes before getting out of bed, and another reminder set for a meditation app you're paying for and only open once a month, when the subscription payment hits your bank account.

You're doing a lot of work, but the attention you're giving any one thing is divided.

The Trap of Divided Attention

There's usually a time in every year when everything you need to deal with piles up demanding your attention and all your new ideas and projects for growth seem equally important and you feel the urge to tackle it all at once. Right behind that comes the itch for a system, a plan, a way to get everything handled at once, driving you to want it all on the same timeline of progress.

"If I handled all of it right now, I'd finally be caught up."

That thought is a trap. Five half-finished projects, five just-started plans, don't add up to more progress than the one thing you see through to the goal. Picking one thing lets you finish something, or master something, and finishing, or mastering, is what changes how you start the next thing, or which next thing deserves the priority.

How to Choose Where to Begin

Listen to what's loudest. But don't just believe it. Sometimes the noisiest problems are the ones that carry the biggest reward or the greatest discomfort, but they may not be the thing that unlocks everything else. Often the unlock is the thing you're actively trying to avoid. The thing that needs you first isn't always the one that keeps interrupting your thoughts. But the one that feels critical or urgent is worth noting anyway, because it can point you toward the foundational thing you'd rather ignore.

Write down the critical thing along with your other highest priorities. Consider your ultimate goal and rank the rest by how closely they serve it. Often the other pursuits are dependent on the one thing that feels loudest, which is part of why it's so loud. Decide how they connect, write them down, and set them aside. You're not abandoning them. They're waiting for a system that can support them.

Ask what's the one unsexy thing that will make the goal real. Look at your list and think about the one thing all of it needs to hold together: sustainable, obtainable, possible. Look closely at the thing you believe holds the key to your relief or your reward, and ask where it might stall out, what's missing, how it's most likely to fail. You're checking the foundation under that one promising thing to make sure it can hold what you're building on it. That's where you focus first.

Keep a Steadying Stone Nearby

Atlantisite is a good fit for this kind of work. It's made of two complementary minerals, Serpentine for clearing and making room, Stichtite for staying kind to yourself while you do it. It's useful for the moment when the old urge to rush ahead and fix everything at once threatens to hijack your intention.

Give it two weeks before you judge it. A new habit or a fresh foundation rarely proves itself in three days.

What Happens Next

Once you've picked the one thing, the next question tends to be about people: what happens when saying yes to this one thing means telling someone else no about the other things?

Read the next article Grounded Enough to Say What You Need and download the Ground, Clarify, and Voice Pdf.