Adapting the Scattershot Approach

Focusing is definitely the way to go when trying to reach a goal. When you focus intensely, you see visible, constant & consistent progress, and you get there faster. Focusing helps immensely.

I personally believe that focusing is a great thing; it makes all the difference.

But the thing is, I can’t often focus on anything for very long. I get distracted easily. I come up with 18 thousand other ideas that sound equally new and exciting. I need to get a drink of water. I forget what I was trying to do. I feel like doing something else.

So a lot of the time I end up using the scattershot approach instead. That doesn’t work as well, and it definitely doesn’t work as quickly, but with some tweaking the scattershot approach can be turned into mini-focus sessions instead. And those DO work. Fairly quickly at that.

They just require a little planning and what I call circular focus.

For example, I have a huge number of goals and projects that I’m working on. So I work on 2 or 3 of them every day, for an hour or so each. Occasionally I’ll really get into one of them and end up working longer, but that’s fine.

I rotate through the my giant list until they are all done. I also choose one of the goals or projects to be the priority, and work on that particular one much more regularly — pretty much every day while I rotate out the rest.

This way I’m still doing lots of different things and making a little progress on all of them, but I make visible progress on a particular one. I also list each of the various projects and goals in Google calendar so that they don’t fall through the cracks.

This is a good compromise for me, because it takes advantage of my wide variety of interests, while still making sure that things get done.