026: Five Trade-offs of Long-Term Singular Focus

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, touch time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. Coming at you with big news today from Freetime Headquarters. I am recording this the day after putting the final finishing touches on the book manuscript. I almost can't believe I'm saying this. I have that post finals getting a little sick the next day after finishing a big project. But that's it. Every last suggested change in my Google Doc is complete. Every comment is resolved. I can't believe it. I've worked in Google Docs this whole time and in fact there were so many comments from all these multiple editing rounds that Google Docs gave me the error message saying you have maxed out on the number of comments and suggested changes. Please copy this doc and start fresh. This enormous project. I worked on the manuscript in earnest, I would say. I started doing my 100 words a day in December and I just shipped right at the end of July. So as I mentioned in the last episode, it will go to typesetting next, which is where it gets laid out in all the interior pages. I calculated in Rescue Time that this book, this project in particular has taken. My estimate is 300 hours because I calculated across seven to eight months. It was about 80 hours in notion, which is what I use to organize all my essays and snippets and writing and research. And then I believe I had something like 220 hours in Google Docs. So 300 hours total, plus or minus. And of course that doesn't include my time reading and researching, conducting interviews that I ended up pulling from the transcripts. But I'm going to talk today about the nature of singular focus and some of the trade offs that I've made because this is definitely the most fun I've ever had writing a book. This is my third book and the most interesting because I've sort of forfeited income during this time to give it such singular focus.

I just pulled my exact numbers so 300 hours in the book across seven months and so far 600 computer hours in 2020. About half of those were spent pretty much on the book on the writing process. People have often asked me over the years how long does it take to write a book? And with life after college start to finish it took three years with pivot. Same thing from ideating proposal, selling the book. Working with a publisher took about three and a half years. But we know that not all of that time is spent clicking away on the keyboard. So with free time it's been the most interesting because I've been able to directly track because it has only remained in Google Docs and because I've had such singular focus on the book this year have a much more accurate assessment. I'll also say that this is the fastest I've ever written in my life. It's the fastest and the most fun and the most joyful which are all the principles that I talk about in free time. It's interesting to see what trade offs come with having the best time working on a book which is a very large, complex can be intimidating task. Before I get into the nuances of this, I want to give a big shout out to our new BFFs. I was so delighted and so excited when I saw a handful of you join. So in the last episode I shared that we have this private community for heart based business owners. We meet once a month on Zoom. But I really want to say thank you and welcome to Michelle, Monica, Kyle and Victoria. Just beyond thrilled to have you. Kyle's coming back. He was an incredible momentum member and kind of merged momentum into Insider BFF and it's just oh my gosh, it's just my favorite people and Insider has helped weigh in on a lot of the book decisions, title, subtitle, cover thumbnails and there's going to be a lot more to follow. So welcome Michelle, Monica, Kyle and Victoria and listeners if you want to join us. It's going to get really exciting from here. Just head to itsfreetime.com BFF and in fact we have our live call coming up next week. It's always on the second Wednesday of every month and and it would just be so fun to see you there. We do it on video Zoom. You can submit questions in advance if you can't make it live and of course, as I mentioned last time, the recordings go out on a private feed. It's nice because it can be pretty passive for you. I've said before, I am lurker in chief on anything I join. I'm so quiet and in the background. And what I love about how we've set it up for this year is that you don't have to log in anywhere. You don't even have to remember if you want to submit questions, you can for me to answer. But. But otherwise you'll just get these private recordings pushed to your feed and bonus episodes, extended unedited episodes like the one I just recently released with Mike Michalowicz. And hopefully I'm gonna have more and more fun with it as I shift from such singular focus on the book back over to the podcast, which is really next in line. In addition to starting the marketing plans for the book, I also wanna say thank you to everybody who in the life of this freetime podcast, since it launched March 21, 2021 is my lucky number. Thank you for everyone who has rated and reviewed the show. I don't harp on this a lot because it kind of annoys me whenever I'm listening to other podcasts. Just the constant please write and review, please write and review. And even without me reminding you about 15, I think 15 or 16 people have rated this new show and left the most wonderful reviews and comments. And those just fill me up so much. They're, they're, they're energizing, they're motivating, they're affirming. And as I shared in the missing Mojo episode, even though I'm six years into podcasting, it is still intimidating and picking a new subject area and growing a new show from the ground up and competing with the. I mean, I don't even think of competition in the way that I'm using the term, but kind of jockeying for ear time with all the celebrities who have podcasts now. And it is an intimidating venture. And I am, to be honest, I have so much fun on the interviews, but I'm still intimidated by how to grow the show to where I want it to be. I still don't know if my ambitions meet my abilities, if those two will merge. Maybe I'm one of those people where it's like, no, sorry, you're just not cut out. You, you wouldn't enjoy. Maybe the universe is like protecting me from. I won't enjoy the life of a podcaster if it's my full time way that I earn a living. But Maybe I would. I have no clue. And I'm still in that very vulnerable state where where I just am keep putting one foot in front of the other in faith. And then only once I turn my singular focus to the podcast for a sustained amount of time am I really going to know how it's all going to shake out. Unfortunately, there is no centralized podcast rating scene. It's mostly in itunes. You can go to ratefreetime.com actually bought that domain and it will redirect you to a service that allows you to rate fun. That's the first time I've been able to say that out loud here on this show. You can go to ratefreetime.com and if you want to leave a rating, just however many stars, and if you want to leave a qualitative review with your actual comments, that's super cool too. And like I said, it's really lifting me up right now. And I would love to know what resonates with you the most, what you're enjoying, because I will happily try to do more of it with that. Let's get into today's topic, singular focus. I want to distinguish between short term singular focus and long term, which is really what I want to focus on.

The best definition I could find of singular focus is the ability to concentrate exclusively on a single task without distraction. I think of short term singular focus as within a given day, are you able to sit down and put do not disturb on your phone, on your laptop? Some people do the pomodoro technique, but just sit down and give something your full attention. If you are creating something, can you give yourself 45 minutes or two hours where you don't have to lift your verbal pen from the page. You're not getting pinged and interrupted by others. Nor are you interrupting yourself by saying, oh, this is hard, I don't wanna do this. Let me go check my email real quick. Or let me check the news. Let me check my phone. Let me go get another cup of coffee. Oh, how about another cup of coffee? Oh yeah, let me go get a third or fourth cup of coffee. These are the ways that we wriggle out of sometimes the bigger, scarier things within a given sitting where you might want to have singular focus, but it sometimes elud us. I will put the episode, the interview I did on the Pivot podcast with Nur Eyal in the comments because we talked about his book Indistractable and I thought it was so powerful how he talked about the spectrum of distraction to traction what I'm going to Talk about today is long term, singular focus, meaning really working on one project to the exclusion of just about all else. While I've been so intensely writing the book, which really in earnest started April, May, June, July. Those four months I was not very good about doing podcast interviews, nor have I sent a single newsletter in that time. It's a context switch that I'm not making and I'm giving myself permission that that's okay because for the first time ever, I have full focus on writing this book every day. It is the thing I jump out of bed to do. It is the thing I'm excited. It's having me enjoy the process so much. I'm looking forward to it. I'm having fun with it. I love being a hermit. Michael and I, as I mentioned, have been out of the city and I'm thriving in this mode. Like just absolutely thriving. Not being on calls, not having things on my calendar, working on big, juicy, complex ideas, giving it absolutely everything that I have. Like, I finally feel like I'm living the possibility of. Of what, what would it be like if I could focus entirely on one thing? Not 12 streams of income, not batching, where I do one type of meetings one day and one type of work the next and another the next and. And so on. I mean all day, every day that this is my one and only main priority. Now I don't know what the results of this are going to be because not only do I not have an advance, as I mentioned, I'm hybrid publishing this one, which I feel super excited about, but it means that the bank of Jenny is funding this entire project. So not only am I not earning much money right now, I'm not getting hired to speak too much right now. Summer is always slow in the biz in my industry for speaking and events and even any kind of corporate partnerships around licensing. It's always super slow in the summer and there's no book advance this time around. So there's definitely a trade off here. This is a lot of background, but I feel like it's important before we get into the trade offs. As I was reflecting, there are about five that I can think of that immediately come to mind. Another way to phrase it would be pros, cons and considerations. One caveat I always like to give is that I never want to assume that, oh, singular focus means you can't be earning money at the same time. So just take everything I'm saying with a just. This is my current situation, but anything is possible. And I love, as I shared in pivot combinatorial questions. I love inviting nonlinear breakthroughs. I love rejecting any notions that I or we or you might have about if this then that where it seems limiting or like it might hold you back.

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Greg McCown in his book Essentialism there's a visual that represents what I'm talking about here. Picture a sunshine. There's a circle and there's a bunch of arrows, let's say 10 arrows radiating outward that are about an inch long. And then on the right hand side of the diagram is a circle with only one arrow radiating out, pointing straight up. That's let's say 5 inches. This is singular focus. Instead of attention and energy radiating outward in all these directions, which is always how I have run my business in the past, diversified income and whatnot. What we're talking about here is what are the trade offs of long term singular focus where there is one arrow. When I was saying we don't know the results of mine yet, like we have, I have no clue how the book Free Time is going to do. So imagine if, if I'm here, I mean I can tell you that I'm having the most fun. So from a personal enjoy spirit nourishing perspective, yes, it is a huge success in terms of financial career, et cetera. Results, Total gamble. Who knows? If the book does really well, I can be redeemed. I can be like singular focus. It works. Oh my gosh, it's the way. And then who knows, if it just doesn't work, then I'll say, oh no, what was I doing that whole time? I should have had other. I should have had other irons in the fire, but I have not. I've not been able to bring myself to want to create products, create courses, launch things, any of it. Any of it. Other than the insider BFF community that I mentioned at the beginning of the call. I don't want to distract myself right now. I am going all in on myself and my ideas and I. I'm like, I just feel that I'm 15 years into platform building. It's time. I just feel like Michael in Arabic, they have a term, halas. Like enough already. And.

Now he just shouted in the background, go, honey, go. So anyway, I feel like challas. It's time. It's time to try to give it everything I got and just know what that's like. Let's get into these five trade offs. Number one I talked about. I'm not earning very much right now. And I think that's both deliberate choices, like stopping one on one coaching, downshifting, momentum, no speaking gigs in the summer. But also energetically, energetically, my attention is not outward. It's not attracting new clients, it's not attracting new gigs. I think that there's something, you know, in Sex of the City, there's an episode, they talk about men when their taxi light is on, then they marry the next woman they date. I don't know, fellas, if you'll know that reference or not, but it's like my taxi light is off, even energetically, as I've been working on the book. So one trade off, if you want to have singular focus like this long term on a big project, is potentially your income could be impacted if you're not super strategic about creating a long Runway for yourself in advance. Or maybe some of you, you know, so skilled at creating passive income, let's say you manage a rental property or a building and it spits off enough income for you to live. That's pretty passive, all things considered. And then you could have singular focus on a creative project. I don't know. I have not really created that exact type of passive income. I have other things and at other cyclical parts of the year. But I would say there can be financial trade offs. The second trade off is that I'm far less social. I have to say, living outside of the city, living outside of our home city has been a huge boost for this singular focus because I feel there's no one I can see. And then that combined with COVID and the kind of socially approved distancing, I know it's been a very hard time for a Lot of people, and especially extroverts or people living alone. For me, it feels like really how I thrive is to just be a complete hermit. And that's been very interesting to lean into that and experience it and see what's possible in terms of my creative work when that's happening. Because especially living in a vibrant city like New York, there are always, like events or things or people or friends. And a lot of it's so joyful. But I don't know if I would have the discipline to say, oh, for four months I'm just not even going to leave the house. Which is basically what I've done this summer. I also am not proactively calling friends and family as much because I'm so immersed in the project. It's like I'm deep down spelunking in the creative cave and the light at the top where the people are, it just feels so far away. That takes me to the third trade off. Switching between book and meetings or podcast interviews is hard. And the contrast in energy and just the way of being for both is so different that it's kind of jarring. It's kind of hard when I'm so deep down in the creative cave to just pop out and show up for a meeting or to talk about logistics or to talk about certain, you know, like corporate clients, what do they need? What can we do? Or even a podcast interview like, oh, I have to come out of the cave, be energetic and be social and be on and be vibrant and. And it's not easy. It's. I would say that is a trade off is that the energy gets so pooled in a certain mode that it's harder to switch the fourth trade off, it's a bigger bet. So I talked about financially, I talked about the trade off of not earning as much when I have such singular focus. But also it's a bigger bet this time around I am putting all my creative eggs in one basket, so to speak. So it's not like, oh, I'm launching a book and a podcast and a course and this and that at the same time. This time around I'm doing much more of a. Well, in coding and software, they would call it waterfall development. Like one thing completes and then leads to the next. And I do have, I do have a really exciting product in mind, actually, that I want that if someone finishes the book and they just want a one click implementation of a lot of the principles and it's going to be, it's going to have a high sticker price And I'm excited about that. I can't wait to build that product. But it's not happening yet. So there's going to be this big lag. Not just this time spent writing the book, but we send it to the printer six months early, so it doesn't launch till, I mean, at the time of this recording. Seven months, seven, eight months. So it's a long ways out to even be waiting for that momentum from anything. And it's a lot of pressure to put on a project with Pivot. When my editor told me that we were gonna have to postpone the launch six months, it was supposed to come out in the spring, in April of 2016. And when they told me it was gonna come out in September, I cried. I was so upset. I was like, I'm relying on this. I'm waiting. My business needs this. And then the metaphor that came to me was that I had been treating my book like it was entering some kind of child beauty pageant. Like I was putting so much pressure on it to win, to do well, to save the business, to turn the finances around. And it ended up, of course, as it always is, such a blessing. I ended up needing every single day of those six months to build a lot of the business backend and scalable programs that I did that ended up being ready just in the nick of time as the book launched. And I do feel that way with free time. Like, I'm going to need the six months where the book is done. But I'm building the marketing engine and the communication engine and the business backend and the few products that will go with the book. So the fifth trade off ties into that. And the trade off is platform building. Oh, man. As I shared in the last episode, launching a book is a big effort. It requires so many people tapping so many relationships. Like, even asking for blurbs is such a vulnerable process. And during this time, I just have not been. I'm not extroverting, I'm not texting, I'm not on phone calls, I'm not networking. I'm not even recording Pivot episodes right now. I'm not sending the newsletter. Like, there's so, so many micro touch points that would be a good idea and that would be helpful leading up to launch, that I'm not doing. And all I can do is trust that it's going to be okay and that the book will still make its way into the world. Even if I'm not like, hardcore networking, strategizing for the three years leading up to it. I'm also really curious about how to launch free time in a free timey way. Oh, that's the first time I use that word in the book. I share the word, the phrase free timer, which I would consider you a free timer if you're here listening and even this far in the episode and freetime ua it's like how can I launch with ease and joy and not try to be someone I'm not? Which is this like pound the pavement kind of launcher. I've done that. I really have done that. But I'm curious what some other strategies might look like. So platform building is a trade off of this singular focus. Cause I'm not simultaneously juggling both the way I have in the past and that's. It's just interesting. It's going to be interesting to see what happens as a result of that. And it will be a much more abrupt ramp or ramp up once I turn my attention to those types of activities again. Even having sent the manuscript, having finished it yesterday, today I just want to lay in bed. I just want to curl in bed and read. And today is a call day. I have meetings a Thursday. I have all my calls today and I'm really looking forward to them. But the energetic shift is like I really. What do I really want to do the day after finishing the final edit on 300 hours of a writing project? I just want to lay in bed. So it's not going to be easy. And I noticed myself feeling kind of gosh, fomo. We need a new word. It's not really fomo, but I have like so mo. Okay, sadness of missing out or like sadness of missing how much fun I have had in the hermit mode of this project. And soon is going to turn to momo Mo marketing. That's what we used to call momentum, by the way. Momo Momoers shout out So I have SOMO for the days of like hermit Moe just writing and that. That's the most. That vision that I used to have as a kid of like being a writer actually kind of happen this year despite the financial sort of like chaos around it. I'm trying to stay calm about. And once I turn to marketing, I'm just gonna have to find the ways to love that and probably not even call it marketing. And I'm. I'm actually three days in, I'm starting a 40 day kind of kundalini meditation intention setting around abundance not just for me and this project, but for the readers. And I'm really picturing from now this energetic weaving into the Project into the book of like. May every person who needs this book find it, benefit and grow their business and grow their time. And just sort of imagining it and starting to plant those seeds. That's kind of one of my energetic bridges that will take me into the next phase. Those are the five big trade offs that come to mind, or if you want to call them, pros, cons and considerations. It is a big leap, It's a big leap of faith to give something such singular focus because there is no guarantee that it's going to work. But I will say that this feels like the best at bat that I could give. There is no guarantee that my best efforts, that my best abilities will yield any guaranteed results. There's just no promise of that. However, at least I can know that this time around it is a 10 out of 10 in terms of have I given it everything? I have. And I know I gave pivot and life after college. I know I gave those 10 out of 10 so effort as well, just in very different ways. With free time, it's like this is the most singular focus I could have possibly created for this project. It is the most effort, the most joy that I could have done. And I know that doesn't guarantee me any results, but I will launch it knowing I did it to the best of my ability. And it just doesn't mean that everyone's cut out or it's in our life path or our calling to be a bestselling author or make the lists or any of those external markers of success. I just trust that good things will happen. And as I share in free time, I look forward to the serendipity popcorn of it, of just all these kernels go out into the universe in the forms of book books, finding people and then I just love to see what pops. And I love the surprise element of having no clue what this book is going to do in the world, but just the surprise that starts to follow and the momentum and the serendipities. That's what I love. That's why, I swear, that's why I write books, because it just creates. I've also called them in the past Serendipity lottery tickets. I hope you found this helpful. I'm so curious. Have you been able to give something like this long term singular focus? What was your experience of that? What are your fears around it? What are your follow up questions? Let me know. You can send me a voice Note@it's freetime.com Ask or join us in our private community. It's freetime.com BFF and the author toolkit that I mentioned just to give you that link one more time. I'm going to keep adding to it. I have a ton of stuff that I want to add from the free time process. It's completely free. That's@itsfreetime.com authors and I will put links to these in the show Notes. Thank you so much for being here. Listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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