Courage

Some time ago, a friend asked me “I don’t see you online as much, is everything ok?”

It was true, I was spending less time on social media and on LinkedIn.

Fortunately everything was ok. Better than ok, I decided to take my kids to the bus in the morning myself, rather than having someone help us with the morning routine.

This meant that something had to go. And it was 30 minutes of daily social media, which I mostly enjoyed, but was not the most important thing at that time.

I thought: “After all the years I invested in social media, what will happen if I just now reduce my engagement? Will my stuff become invisible? Will I lose all that I built?”

It reminded me of a quote from Jonathan Escobar’s book Lead to Beat: “Courage isn’t about starting new things. It’s about stopping the non-brutally important ones.”

It took some courage to let go of that, and I was a bit anxious, also because I genuinely enjoyed it.

It’s so easy to start new stuff.

So many opportunities, so many interesting things.

The real challenge is to stop doing what’s not essential.

This is true for personal projects and for work teams.

What’s a non-essential activity that’s currently eating into your most valuable time?