Focus versus Exploration - Which Way to Go?
Posted on March 21, 2013 by Henrieta Riesco, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
The "why" and "how" of keeping an eye on the big picture while building your expertise.
How do you become really great at something? Well, you need to learn about it, practice, learn about it some more, practice some more… Getting into little details can make a difference between good and great. You need to focus.
I agree with all that and would like you to add something else to the mix, something completely different. Focusing on one specific area helps you put all your energy into one activity (kind of like hitting a nail with a hammer). But it also limits you. When you focus on ONE thing, you’re blind and deaf to everything else around you. Over time you may lose perspective and you may get lost deeper and deeper in your area of focus.
Let’s say you spend your days honing your analytical skills, getting better and better in seeing the trends, patterns, deviations, causes and effects. I challenge you to put it down for a while and do something enjoyable that would not need analyzing skills at all. Do you like gardening? Or hiking with friends? Perhaps cooking? Or maybe watching cartoons with your kids? Try to pick something completely different – the environment, the people, the activity, the inspiration – and shut down the analyzing completely. What magazines do you usually read? What magazines would you never pick up? Now, go ahead and pick the ones you have always avoided. Be curious. Be playful.
It’ll be really hard to STOP whatever you are focused on, but the benefits of this switch can amaze you. You may gain new perspectives on some old issue, you may find connections between what you do and what’s out there in the world, you may get inspired and find a new passion, and most of all, your brain will get refreshed. It’s like turning off a machine that was running for a really long time and letting it cool down a bit.
You know that saying “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”? By taking a break from your practice of becoming awesome at something, you may see new opportunities, challenges that catch your attention and that you’d like to follow up on. Many of the great ideas were born where people looked around – have you heard of “renting truffle trees”? What about a “mobile pet grooming business”?
Taking an active break doesn’t mean abandoning your specialty. You can trust yourself that you will pick it up again where you left it with more energy and more awareness. You can lose yourself in the nitty-gritty once again, knowing you are a different person now, enriched by the awareness of the world around you.
