Achieve more by embracing the chaos in life

When you do a lot at once, you’re not actually multi-tasking. You’re just doing one thing at a time very, very quickly.

At least, that’s according to Dan Thurmon, an author and speaker on achieving optimal performance. In his 2013 Annual Meeting presentation “Off-balance on purpose,” Thurmon cites a study in Scientific American magazine which posits people who consider themselves multitaskers actually are just switching back and forth from one thing to the next, and in each transition, they break concentration.

“You break your momentum if you don’t do it precisely and cleanly with efficiency,” he said. “How much better could we be if we stay focused on what matters most?”

Dan Thurmon presents at the 2013 Annual Meeting

Keep your eyes up

He compares the situation to literal juggling, and the goal of taking throws higher and higher. To achieve the best results, he said, you can’t get caught watching your hands. “The moment you look down to confirm you just made a great catch, you can’t see what’s coming next, and more importantly, you can’t see the pattern,” he said.

If advisors only focus on individual items and moving faster and faster, Thurmon continued, they aren’t able to see a broader pattern or purpose. That’s part of why he embraces a feeling of being off-balance as a way of achieving perspective and, oddly enough, stability.

“It’s a discipline to elevate your vision in the midst of change and chaos,” he said. “And others will see what you see.”

Push yourself forward

He recalled learning to juggle when he was 11 to demonstrate his point. The process of juggling three balls clicked, and he tried to add a fourth. It wasn’t working. Yet as he attempt four-ball juggling, his three-ball juggling got even better. He had to try five-ball juggling to get better at handling four.

“If you think what you’re doing now is difficult, guess what? It’s probably time to try something a little bit harder,” he said. “Once you do, this level gets easier, and once you stretch, you never go back to where you once were. This is how we learn and grow. We never master one level completely and then decide to move on.”

Read more in “Off-balance on purpose”

Written by Matt Pais, MDRT Content Specialist