Cal Newport often speaks about constraints or limits as a means to quality output.
Something I’ve been mentally toiling over lately are the many hats that I currently wear and the desire to take some off in order to better yield quality results.
Now I know not all aspects of my life will have quantifiable results. Quality results for example as a father, is more of a feel good about myself because I’m spending quality time where I’m connecting with my children.
The current hats that I wear today are:
- Husband
- Father
- Director of Engineering
- Three areas in which I serve in my local church
- Curator of Spell It Out
- Curator of Research Triangle Jobs
- Blogger
The first three hats aren’t ones that I will take off. I mean because, first two are obvious and the third, it provides a means to support the first two.
For the three areas in which I serve in my local church, I’ll likely give up one. It feels like a good time to pass the baton onto someone who might bring upon fresh perspective. One of the remaining two, I’ve limited my commitment when I first decided to serve in this area. For this reason will continue serving in the remaining two areas.
Curator of Spell It Out is something I can’t quite shake. It’s a project that I actually let go once and for some reason I just couldn’t shake the idea.
So I’ll keep with it. It’s a low commitment because the content is evergreen and I update the site only when I stumble upon a new acronym.
Curator of Research Triangle Jobs is a hat I will take off.
I’ve always been fascinated by job boards. Both as a way to serve a local community – in my case the technology job seekers and companies of the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area – and as a business idea.
From a serving the local community perspective – I believe I’ve achieved it. Folks have organically been finding the site and signing up for the weekly emails.
From a business idea, the approach in which I was taking – search engine optimization and sharing on LinkedIn has failed. SEO-wise I did what I could programmatically to get it to rank and what not. Google started picking up job postings to show on its SERP several months ago.
But it seems Google’s algorithm is ever-changing and as of late, doing some weird things which has been taking a toll on ranking more organically.
While I got the time investment of Research Triangle Jobs down to an hour a week total, it’s an investment that doesn’t bring me joy or yields me much motivation to continue.
I know there could be things I could do to turn things around for eventual success, but with the limited energy I have, I’m choosing not to. Therefore, I’ll close it down in a few weeks or pass the baton if someone else wants to carry it forward.
Being a blogger is weirdly a part of who I am. I’m not doing it professionally and so there is no set schedule. I write an article whenever an idea that passes my mental checklist of potentially interesting things to share – there’s no formula, just a gut feeling – so it’s low commitment and a creative outlet. I will continue wearing this hat.
So that’s two of the nine hats currently coming off for this season of my life. Seven still feels like a lot. By end of year I should be down to six or maybe less. I’m hoping with the hats coming off there is a better yield in quality results in the areas in which I will keep a hat on.
If like me, you’re feeling like you wear too many hats, perhaps you too should take inventory of the hats you’re currently wearing.
Then ask yourself, does it bring joy on a weekly basis or is it taking away energy? If the answer is no joy or yes taking away energy, perhaps it’s time to take those hats off and refocus your energy, time and resources on the hats you remain wearing.