Not Following Through

There’s been a lot of chatter on the comments recently about me not following through, most of it deserved. Throughout my life one of my struggles has been to focus on one thing and follow it through. I used to be totally incapable of it, but over the years have gotten better. There are a lot of things that I have followed through with (my diet, writing this blog, etc.) as well as plenty that I haven’t.

Once in a while I feel, for whatever reason, that I’ve conquered it, and I announce it to the world. While I’m on the topic of admitting faults, another is that I tend to prematurely announce things sometimes. As a reader, you already know that.

I understand your frustration when you read about something I say I’m going to do, get excited about seeing it happen, and then it falls off the radar. If it’s any consolation, I’m acutely aware of these things and am similarly frustrated.

I waffle on whether or not to write posts like this. On one hand I like to just write honestly about what’s going on, but on the other hand I want to write posts with solutions, and this isn’t one.

Life Nomadic

I think that yesterday’s post was misunderstood. I didn’t mean that I’m not being a nomad and writing about it anymore. What I meant is that it’s a learning process and I’m going to learn from my mistakes and adjust my pace and itinerary. I’ll get into specifics when I have them, but I’m still working out the details for myself.

The idea behind being a nomad is to free myself from any location, thus giving myself free reign over where I am. The imaginary obligation I was referring to was the obligation to stick to a schedule and plan that wasn’t working.

Other than blog posts, I haven’t produced any work that you’ve seen in quite a while. This is deceptive. I’m trying to not announce things before I know I can commit to them, so I have a few exciting things I’ve kept under wraps. I also know that I’ve been promising a gear post for a LONG time. I’ve actually done TONS of work on this and hope to have it ready soon.

I’ve been in Austin for less than a week and most of that time has been spent dealing with my RV (like spending ALL DAY today bringing it to San Antonio and making my way back in a bit of a misadventure) and catching up with my friends. Before that I was traveling way too frantically to get serious work done, which is the problem I’ve spoken about yesterday and today.

At the end of the day these ARE just excuses. I try to hold myself to a very high standard, but the best I can do when I fail to reach those standards is to let you know what has been going on.

Why I Lose Steam

I read a lot and try to expose myself to new ideas. This is partly great, of course, but it also leads me to believe that past commitments were mistakes.

Take Life Nomadic, for example. I announced that it would be my Dip and that I would charge through no matter what. Months later I realized I had no actual plan to make money, and I read the E-Myth. If I had read the E-Myth earlier I would have noticed that I was building myself a job, not a business.

So now I find myself doubting whether I should keep focusing on Life Nomadic as a business. These are questions that I really should have paid more attention to before making the decision to stick with it, but I didn’t.

At some point, of course, I have to accept that no decision will be a perfect decision, and just stick with something anyway. I have a very difficult time figuring out when that is.

Besides getting new information which changes how I view past decisions, I also have a bad tendency to spread out my attention. This is one area where I’ve made improvements. Since reading The Dip I really have divested myself of any real involvement with my other businesses. The people who said they would take them over all bailed on me inexplicably, but I’ve let them be. At the same time I’ve been able to rein myself in from taking on other projects that have seemed exciting.

To be clear, I still don’t have that laser focus that a lot of people I admire have, but I’m working on it.

There are probably many other factors that contribute to this deficiency. I’m peripherally aware of a few and it’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to work on.

Where We Go From Here

Expect that this is not the last you’ll see of my problem with sticking with something. It’s something I’m actively working on and will eventually conquer. Know that it’s a top priority for me and that any failure is far more annoying to me than it is to you. I do feel a duty to my readers to be a positive role model and to offer solutions to your problems. This is one area where I am not able to do so yet; all I can do is share what I learn along the way.