Give Up Some Options to Be Truly Free: Focus on One Thing

To achieve something substantial, you must give up some options. To be truly free, you must understand self-restraint. Identify your goal, make a single choice, and give up the other options. In a space of great freedom, every choice is open and every choice is tempting. If you do not know how to let go and want to enter every door, you will become confused. We often think ourselves clever: we believe we can do A and B, this thing and that thing. But even if you are clever, time is limited. Suppose everyone lives to eighty. If you do ten things, even starting in childhood gives you less than ten years for each. Someone less clever than you might do just one thing in a lifetime, but spend several times as long on it. They can work at it easily, combining work and play, yet still accumulate deeper expertise than you. Their returns from that one thing may even exceed your gains from all ten combined. Every life is finite. How can we obtain the greatest return in our limited time? My suggestion is to do one professional thing as well as possible, with persistence and focus. To gain something and earn a return along life’s path, the first requirement is continuous, positive accumulation in one direction. Time changes the nature of a thing. The longer it takes, the more precious it becomes. The key is therefore to use time well. Time is interesting: it is both an investment good—something used to earn money—and a consumption good—something used for enjoyment. In our finite lives, these two uses compete with each other. But if we keep working at one thing and investing in one direction, marginal returns will increase. Less time will be required for each unit of return. We can save much of the time that would otherwise be invested and instead use it for consumption: enjoying life. With more freedom and more choices, we need greater restraint. Too much variety in our options can be confusing, and too many choices can leave us with nothing. To achieve something substantial, give up some options. To be truly free, understand self-restraint. Choose carefully what you will persist with. If you invest your time in the wrong thing and the return becomes negative, the longer you spend, the greater the disaster. Whether the activity brings a return depends partly on time, but also on the values you use to decide what to do. Reflect on and adjust those values from time to time. #馮侖歲月凶猛 [Feng Lun’s Suiyue Xiongmeng] ----- Doing one thing well in a lifetime is fulfillment enough.