Pressure Points

I was walking along the water looking across the San Francisco Bay with my friend. Listing off everything I didn’t get done for the day.

Getting things off the ground for my business has felt overwhelming at times. I’m building software and automations, taking meetings, making content. The way my brain works is I have a ton of energy, which means I like to do a lot of things. (See previous sentence).

The issue with that is that when I try to do so many things, I’m not able to devote my attention and focus on doing one thing really really well. Taking us back to our math and physics days, a good analogy is vectors and pressure points.

Imagine me, one big ball of energy. Like a sun. I’ve got the energy to shoot light out in all directions.

That looks great on the surface. Shiny, energetic, everywhere at once. But if I'm shooting energy in all directions, nothing gets my full force.

This is where we are going to switch to physics. Imagine trying to break out of a car through the window. You’re going to punch the window, maybe even hit it with your hand. Nothing happens. It’s because you’re spreading the force way too far out across an area instead of directing that same force over a precise point.

Which is why my dad gave me one of these, for the rare event I drive my car into a river.

You can smack that window all you want with your hand. It's probably not breaking. (your hand might). That’s because you’re spreading all your force and effort across too much area. Nothing will happen. But a tiny point of focused force? Bang.

Instead I need to be relentlessly focused on where to apply 90% of my energy at a time to get the highest output. Like the window breaker.

So instead of looking like this. I look like this:

A good example is this very newsletter. Something that brings me so much joy, it’s a creative outlet but takes a lot of energy input every week to write a banger blog post. Which I try to do, every time.

So I made the call to pull back and write this newsletter every 2 weeks so I could apply more creative energy and focus on higher leverage outputs, like content and product. I don’t think it’s forever but I think I am going to be relentlessly critical on where I direct my energy to at times, when I need it most.

The feeling of never doing enough or getting enough done will never go away. That’s a core behavior of a very very ambitious person. My friend Ben put it well:

"Who we are today is the trailing indicator of work done six months ago. All growth is lagging. All identity is lagging. The discomfort of that lag might be the most reliable sign that something is actually moving.”

So whether you're an entrepreneur or someone trying to just do… life. That feeling will never go away. That’s a sign that you’re making the effort, and the progress is lagging, but it’s coming.

What you and I decide to focus on is going to change from time to time. I hope it does, that’s a good sign.

So instead, I stopped asking "did I do enough?" and started asking "did I give it my max effort?"

If the answer is yes, then I did enough.

You’re Awesome,

Jared

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Things Worth Clicking

A few gems I found on the internet this week - no digging required….

P.S. - Twitter links aren’t working on beehiiv right now, but trust me, you want to check these tweets out.

• I’ve been getting deep into learning how to use AI to be more efficient. Sub-agents are continuing to get big. Once you learn how to get AI to do specific tasks you feel like a wizard (or sorceress). Some guys automated their entire sales process using agents.

• How to be a good accountability partner. Don’t know who this guy is, but he gets two features because of his relevancy to today’s post.

  

  Both tweets above are from this guy.

• I have been diving deep into designs recently and came across another kick ass design studio: Ragged Edge

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

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