The Next, Most Necessary Thing

An idea from Carl Jung that I first learned of in Four Thousand Weeks:

This directive has been a gamechanger for me. It helps settle my anxiety amidst my unrelenting pursuit of maximum productivity.

It causes me to confront the fact that:

I can only do 1 thing at a time

The spotlight of attention can only shine in 1 direction

Even when “multi-tasking,” I'm simply switching my attention back-and-forth between the two (or more) tasks in front of my field of vision

So what's the 1 thing that ought to dominate my attention?

The Next, Most Necessary Thing

To provide attention to anything but “the most necessary thing” would be to neglect, by definition, the thing most deserving of my attention.

What this “thing” is will change moment-by-moment

My environment changes

My priorities change

So, all I can do is direct attention to this 1 thing for as long as it remains "the most necessary thing," then I move on to the next

This requires self-honesty

What is “most necessary”?

Only I can answer this for myself

Sometimes the honest answer is “I don’t know”

And yet, the moment I do anything, I'm taking a vote with my actions

This also requires restraint

As my world speeds up

I'm tempted to do more than 1 thing at a time

Increases in productivity pushes out the frontier of possibility

I reach ever-closer to being able to complete two things at once

Yet, despite external progress, my internal consciousness remains constrained

I possess a singular attention

A single beam of the spotlight

I own my choice of where to point it

But a single beam is all I get

Fair warning, this approach can breed a sneaky desire to always be evaluating "what’s next?"

I must be wary of shifting my attention to "what’s next" before finishing "what’s now"

To shine my spotlight on "what’s next", risks leaving "what’s now" in darkness

Thanks for reading. Now that you’re done, you get to choose "what’s next?" for you.

If you'd like a suggestion, here's 9 minutes of President Bartlett saying, "What's Next?" in The West Wing.