Focus or Explore? How you should spend your discretionary time?

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with exercise and fitness. I know it’s important. I know it will make my life better, longer even. I know I need to counter my work-at-home sedentary lifestyle. I know that if I don’t do it, I won’t be able to go on all the adventures I want to see in my life.

When it’s time to exercise none of that matters.

I just don’t like it.

As though the universe was listening, I received a list of different kinds of exercise, non-traditional things that weren’t running, lifting weights, or pilates. I thought it would be interesting to explore some non-traditional exercises to see if I was just trying to do the wrong things. There had to be something out there that I would actually like to do, right? RIGHT?

At the time, I was participating in the Nerd Fitness online community, committing to five-week challenges focused on my goals. So for my challenge, I made a list of 38 different ways to stay active. Things like:

You know and I know, that trying something once is not enough to know if you really like it. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know. So, I was going to see if I could commit to one activity for each challenge over the year to see if I could find anything that I liked to do. That meant picking 8 of the things on my list and committing to trying each one for 5 or so weeks. You can do anything for a short period of time, right? That’s what I always tell myself…

Looking back now, I realize that I had set up my own fitness exploration. I was looking for the thing that clicked so that I could then buckle down and focus. No matter what I picked, I would then be able to find ways to level up until I was really good at it.

I’m learning more about the natural rhythms of life. If you take a minute to look, you’ll see that there’s always an ebb and flow, a push and pull, or a time to be on, and a time to unplug. In a perfect world, we’d all know exactly what phase we should be in, and we’d have the right resources, energy, and motivation to stay the course. Even more, we’d have implicit knowledge of that one thing that guides everything we do. 

We all know life doesn’t work like that. 

But, with a little attention…and intention, we can shape things so they’ll work like that perfect world might.

Optimize for interesting

So let’s start with that one thing.

Whether it’s your personal mission or your north star we’ve all heard how important it is to have an understanding of what drives you. It makes it easier to make decisions. It fills that gaping void in your soul. You’re more likely to jump out of bed every morning excited to face the day. Whether you’re living your “Purpose Driven Life” or working to leave a legacy – you have a dream and you’re working on it, or in it.

For many people, it’s not that simple. Who has time for passion? There are bills to pay, meals to prepare, illness to avoid, entertainment to consume, and workouts to do. The hours in a day are filled so quickly, it’s amazing anyone has a dream, let alone pursues it. Yet, that feeling lingers. The gaping void in your soul makes you ask if there’s something more.

What if there was something in the middle?

That’s where Dorie Clark says, “One of my favorite answers to life’s problems is to lower the bar. A constructive way that we can lower the bar is to say, “Hey, don’t worry about your passion for now. Instead, optimize for interesting.” (Playing The Long Game: Dorie Clark’s Strategies For Success)

She goes on to explain that everyone knows what they like. When you optimize for interesting, you spend more time focusing on that. “Almost any topic is worth an hour of your life to read up on and learn more about.” (from The Long Game: How to be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short Term World by Dorie Clark) 

She expands on this idea, “Figuring out where your true interests lie may seem complicated. But often it’s simply a matter of noticing how you’re already spending your time—and, perhaps, reconnecting with what motivated you in the past.”

My desire to bring a sense of adventure to more areas of my life resonates with this idea of exploring what interests you.

Explore or focus

But what about those natural rhythms of life? 

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

As I shared in my story earlier, we can do anything for a set period of time, right? And we should. We should adopt these natural rhythms to make our life flow more easily. Have you ever had to do a task, and procrastinated and avoided it in every way possible – even if it was something you wanted to do? It was probably because you weren’t in the right rhythm to accomplish that kind of thing at the time.

Let’s dig deeper into one cycle – a time for exploration, to go wide and dabble versus a time for focus, to go deep and execute.

So how do you know which activities to do as the rhythms ebb and flow? How do you know when it’s time to transition from one to the other? 

Explore

Go wide, spend some time on one or more of those interests and take them for a test drive. These are the kinds of activities you’ll want to commit to:

• looking for opportunities
• meeting people
• going to events
• learning
• taking in ideas and insights
• making connections and connecting
• figuring out what to do
• looking for new ideas

Focus

Go deep, spend the time in flow as you:

• double-down in deep work mode 
• create
• focus
• execute
• make progress

Clark recommends three to six months in each phase. In my experience, you’ll know when it’s time to transition as things start to become uncomfortable. If you find yourself dreading a task, procrastinating, avoiding it… give yourself some grace and see if it’s a good time to transition.

Find a  structure for your explorations and set a time limit

Some people may not need this section, but I personally do better if I try to give myself a framework ad a set timeframe. Knowing that I have a deadline can help push me to get things done. It is also a relief to know that I won’t be doing something forever.

Even though you may be in a mode of exploration, it is important to know what you want to accomplish and use that to create a framework to make sure you get those things done.

Here are a few different frameworks that may help you stay on track:

• Sabbatical
• A personal challenge
• A project plan
• Accountability partner
• A Mastermind
• Coaching – either 1:1 or in a group setting

Each has its pros and cons and will be more suitable for different goals. When you figure out your objectives it will likely become obvious which will be best for you.

Don’t forget

1. Optimize for interesting
2. Give yourself a time to explore and a time to focus
3. Setting a time limit and structure for your explorations

It’s your turn

Commit to yourself to make a choice and go all-in. Give yourself over to exploration, or stop the distractions and finally give yourself the focus you crave. Pick one (focus or explore), and do it for a month and see how much better your discretionary time can be