You know that déjà vu feeling?
Like Neo in the Matrix, spotting the two black cats walking past?
It’s happening again…
Feeling like I’ve swum out too far. Too fast. Before I had gained enough strength to be confident playing in the shallows.
I’m talking about adding things into my business that look helpful but pile on layers of complexity… before I’ve even mastered the simple stuff.
I let myself be fooled… that although I CAN do things…
I CAN set up a YouTube channel and make videos. No problem.
I CAN set up multiple Substack publications. Easy as pie.
I CAN work like a machine ’till all hours of the night. No sweat.
But reality eventually gnaws a chunk out of me… because I don’t have the energy to do it all. At least not now.
I simply can’t do it all in a way where I’m both producing things that are helpful to people… keeping my business afloat… and not burning out.
Sure, adding complexity feels like doing work.
But it’s not what’s best for me to spend my time on, if I want to make real and sustainable progress.
I think I have a prone-to-overwork gene.
Who am I kidding?
It’s a prone-to-self-doubt-and-distract-myself-with-other-“work”-instead gene.
I avoid asking…
“Chris, should you really be doing this? … No, Chris, … I mean… should you REALLY be doing this?”
To borrow from The Matrix again…
I sometimes (all the time?) live in this dream world where DOING things gives me a sense of accomplishment…
Never mind that the accomplishment is robbing my business of the leads, the people to help, the income… that focusing on the RIGHT stuff brings.
They also happen to be the HARD things… the “What if this, that, or the other thing happens?” things… the poke and prod at Chris’s underlying self-doubt things.
This is starting to feel like a confession.
And maybe it is.
But it definitely is a realization.
That one of the things I want to work hardest at now is…
Focus.
Just focusing on the simple business that I’ve always wanted.
But I’ve now hobbled with complexity.
So… I’ve already started paring things back.
(Which, ironically, means doing work that isn’t core stuff… but… it needs to be done first.)
I’ve deleted two of my Substack publications. I’m considering the fate of my remaining one.
I’ve refocused the purpose of having a YouTube channel. And will keep it to tutorial-type content as and when I need to add it. Not on a weekly cycle that I’m beholden to.
I’ve rebuilt my website back on WordPress. (Now, that’s a story worth telling sometime… considering I made a song and dance about leaving WordPress. Maybe a case of better the devil…)
That leaves me with my focus on…
Daily email.
Plus, connecting with people on social media.
And a bit of product development for good measure.
Daily email is where it all started for me.
Maybe I’m overdramatizing… but it’s where I really built confidence. And laid the foundation for a proper business. Not just a hobby.
Making these cutbacks is OK with me. Because I’m at peace with my business being a laboratory…
Where there’s experiments going on. Where change is constant. Where the Bunsen-burner can be turned off if I don’t like the smell coming from the beaker.
So I’m turning back toward simple.
Simply doing the things that give me energy. And don’t sap it.
And serving my audience in the best way I can.
Daily email is where it’s at for me.
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Chris Milham