It’s true that we have a finite amount of time in a human lifespan. It’s true that we’re all going to die someday and we all know this.
Time is limited, but it is not our most valuable resource—not by a million miles. An hour spent watching TV is not valuable. An hour spent playing video games is not valuable.
How we spend a given hour or minute determines how valuable that time is. No hour or minute has the same value as any other. The time I spent writing this blog post is worth more than the time you will spend reading it. One takes a hell of a lot more thought, effort, and investment.
The truth is that we all have more time. We all have extra time we waste on activities that have no value at all. We all have more time as long as we’re still alive. We have a lot of time—far more than we need. We wouldn’t waste so much of it if we didn’t have it in an abundant supply.
There is one commodity that is far more valuable than time. It’s our creative focus. How many of you reading this blog post right now could sit down and write a full-length novel from start to finish? How many of you reading this blog post right now could produce, direct, and act in a full-length feature cinematic film from start to finish?
This is why the successful artists of the world get paid so much more for their time than ordinary people get paid for ordinary activities that anyone could do easily. These artists have something the ordinary person doesn’t have. The artist has creative focus.
Time is not the limiting factor in accomplishing your goals. You have plenty of time. You have all the time you could ever need to accomplish your goals. The limiting factor is creative focus.
Creative focus is far more valuable than time. Creative focus is much harder to come by, far more easily lost, and much, much harder to get back once lost. We all have more time. Very few of us have the creative focus to actually accomplish anything of value with the time we’re given. Most of us simply waste it until it runs out.
Whenever I find myself drifting off and staring out the window when I should be working, I remind myself of this simple, powerful truth. Creative focus is always the limiting factor. I don’t need to take a break. I don’t need a snack. I don’t need to plan out whatever it is I’m going to write next.
I just need to focus. I would be able to accomplish the tasks I have set out for myself if I just focused and stay focused. I rate focus about a ninety-seven on the importance scale out of one hundred.
I rate time at about a fifteen or possibly twenty-five at the very highest. The two resources aren’t even in the same stratosphere when it comes to their importance in actually getting done the things I’ve set out for myself to do.
Think about that the next time you admire someone and think they’re doing something you can’t. How can they do it if you can’t? The answer is they’ve simply learned how to focus and you haven’t.
You’re reading this post, so you obviously know how to read and write. You have all the skills you need to write a novel from start to finish. You’ve seen enough TV shows and movies. You know what the process involves.
What are your big goals? I bet you any money that an outside observer could walk into your life and find all the time needed to accomplish those goals.
No one can give you the focus to accomplish them. That focus can only be won the hard way by you alone—by actually focusing on the task and sticking with it long enough to accomplish it.
Do you want to know how I manage to write so many books? My formula is really, really simple. I sit down in front of the computer—and I write the book.
That sounds overly simplistic, but you would be amazed at how many writers in the world don’t do that. They’re actively, deliberately doing everything other than writing the book.
They’re taking walks. They’re cleaning their houses. They’re hanging out with their families and working on their other hobbies. They’re giving interviews and going on press tours. They’re blogging or posting on social media or commenting on the political situation.
Legendary sales and leadership speaker Brian Tracey tells us that salespeople spend an average of ninety minutes every day actually involved in sales. Salespeople spend the rest of their time standing around the water cooler, drinking coffee, checking their email, organizing their schedules, attending meetings, and doing everything other than selling to prospective clients.
The same rule applies to writers. Most writers spend a tiny fraction of their time actually sitting in front of the computer writing the book. They spend ungodly amounts of time thinking about the book, researching the book, talking to other people about the book or some other book they’ve already written, or some combination of all three.
Most writers will use any excuse NOT to write the book. The tiniest distraction will derail them.
There’s a famous saying: Any task will expand to fill the amount of time allotted to it. If we set aside a year to write a novel, it will take a year. If we set aside a week, it will take a week. (I’m living proof of this.)
Focus is always the limiting factor. Time is never the limiting factor. Creative focus is what we get paid to do regardless of our line of work. Only those at the bottom of the social ladder get paid for their time. The rest of us get paid for how much we can get done and how well we can get it done in the allotted time.
Like so many things of genuine value in this life, this investment of hard-won focus has to be made upfront. The effects are cumulative and come long after the focus has been invested.
This is part of the creative focus equation. Part of creative focus is maintaining the vision of the delayed outcome that will make it all worthwhile. We make that investment now for a bigger payoff later.
This is the only way to accomplish any goal—by sustaining focused attention and investment of time, energy, and effort over the long-term. Anything less than total focus on the goal leads to backsliding, inconsistency, potentially failure, or abandoning the project entirely.
None of us wants this and yet so many of us do fail precisely because we don’t realize what our most important investment in the goal really is. We trick ourselves into thinking we’ll accomplish the goal if we just invest enough time into it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We need to focus on the goal, especially if accomplishing it demands incredible mentally intensive effort such as writing a novel.
I can’t think of any activity more mentally demanding of both consistent effort and intense focus than writing a novel. No one understands this better than I do. This is why so many writers have unfinished novels gathering dust on their hard drives for years and decades on end. These writers simply lack the focus to sit down in front of their computers and WRITE THE DAMN BOOK.
Think about that big goal you want to accomplish. If you really think about it and you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that you already have enough time. You have enough knowledge and information to at least start working on it.
You just lack the focus to get it done. You would be able to accomplish your goals if you only focused on them and stay focused. Focus is always the limiting factor no matter what the goal is. Remember that.
If you remember that, you’ll be able to direct your resources where they really belong. You won’t keep getting distracted by all these much less important, much more readily available, and much more easily attainable resources that you already have in abundance.
I hope this helped someone. May God bless you all.
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All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.