How to Narrow Your Focus (when you have many goals)
I have three blogs, two music projects, art, a couple YouTube channels and some side quests in the pocket too. Unsurprisingly, I’ve always struggled with finding ways to narrow my focus.
Until I realized one day that I didn’t need to. At least, not like I thought.
I live a multi-passionate life. I have many goals and I’m constantly being pulled in new directions. From the outside, it looks like chaos (or just a lack of follow-through).
But for me, it’s all makes sense and it’s incredibly aligned. It’s taken me a while to get here, but my focus feels better than ever.
Because I only focus on what’s important — my truest passions. Rather than feeling guilty about wanting to switch goals, I can quickly accept it as just another day. No wasted energy.
Sure, my goals rotate and evolve, but simply accepting that I will always have many projects makes it easier to work on them.
Less anxiety and more creativity.
So these are my top moves for juggling many goals while keeping a narrow focus.
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1. Define Your ‘Focus Loop’
If you have multiple goals and passions, one of the biggest issues is deciding what to even focus on. That’s why I created focus loops, which is system I use to manage multiple goals.
Basically, you define your core projects (goals) that you spend the most time with or that are most important to you. Then, you cycle through them based on your mood, their individual urgency or some other external factor.
It’s a flexible system too, meaning you can pause, add or swap out projects from your loop at any time.
“I usually don’t have more than 3-4 core goals in my loop at a time. But this also depends on how big the goals are and how related they are to each other.”
A key part of a good focus loop is finding a through line for your projects.
Ideally, a focus loop is stacked with goals and projects that somehow relate to or support each other.
For example, I’m turning many of my productivity systems into Notion templates (and eventually an app). That’s one goal I’m working on. But I’m also overhauling this blog and focusing on growing traffic and SEO.
These two goals are totally different but also totally related. The traffic I grow here will spill into growing my Notion templates.
I love using focus loops because they allow me to stay unstructured and multi-passionate, but they make the chaos a little less chaotic.
Explore more:
➤ The Multi-Passionate Handbook
2. Create Tiny Tasks
Let’s put the narrow in narrow focus. Tiny tasks are way smarter than trying to tackle big ones.
And I’m not alone on this — research backs this up.
So if you have a big goal, the smartest way to narrow your focus is to break it down into bite-sized pieces. Aim for doing just 1% each day. If you do more, cool. If not, whatever.
And rather than focusing on some ideal endpoint, focus on milestones along the way.
Because there are no finish lines — not really. Every goal leads to another.
3. Avoid Common Bottlenecks
A lack of focus isn’t always your fault. Sometimes, it’s external. These are focus bottlenecks, and it’s best to avoid them.
For example, distractions like too many open tabs or doom scrolling can make deep focus near impossible.
Luckily, a lot of modern distractions come with pretty simple solutions, like deleting social media off your phone, decluttering your space or embracing more minimalism.
If it’s noise around the house, I put on headphones. And if I need fresh energy, I just go to a cafe.
Focus can sometimes be reached by simply tweaking a small part of your external environment. Just identify what’s distracting you and try to nip it in the bud.
4. Recognize Burnout
Sometimes, trying to focus or work harder is the worst thing you can do — especially if you’re dealing with creative burnout.
So let this be your permission slip to step away and take a break if you need one.
Just remember that burnout is totally different from just being lazy. So keep an eye out for these signs:
Loss of inspiration
Feeling cognitive strain
Chronic motivation issues
Lethargy and feeling drained
Art block and a loss of interest
5. Add A Little Pressure
Focus sometimes needs a little nudge. This is where adding some pressure can help.
For example, creating urgency (like a deadline or a public challenge) boosts motivation and accountability.
You can set an alarm to go off every hour or share your personal deadline with friends and family. Either options turns up the heat a bit and helps you narrow your focus.
Just don’t give yourself too much time either. According to Parkinson’s Law, a task will take exactly as much time as you give it.
So if you give yourself one week to do something, it’ll take you one week. But if you give yourself one day, it’ll take you one day.
So add some pressure — not too much, but not little either.
6. Don’t Narrow Your Focus
The biggest problem we have as multi-passionate people is feeling like we constantly need to decide between projects or narrow our vision.
So — in a counterintuitive surprise — stop trying to narrow your focus. Instead, hop between your main goals (your focus loop).
Follow your mood and use your intuition. When something feels right, then stop. Let yourself get dialed in wherever you are and tap into your flow state.
Suddenly, focus is not an issue.
The biggest downside to this strategy is you may end up doing work on a completely different project than the one you started with.
But the upside is huge. When you follow your mood — where the spark is — you do your best work, because the genuine interest is there. It’s leveraging your motivation rather than trying to create it.
And if you have a clear through line with your focus loop, then tasks will often overlap, so you’re technically making progress on multiple things at once (a true multi-path approach).
And it’s that simple. This is what grounds my whole philosophy around better productivity.
Alright, now stop dilly-dallying and go focus!
Later ✌️
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