To be honest, 2023 wasn’t the most productive year of my life. After conducting some research on the reasons why I failed to achieve 40% of my goals, I came to this conclusion: I simply had too many goals.

When I refer to goals, I don’t mean “simple goals”. I’m talking about goals that require serious effort to accomplish. For example, becoming an “A” class chess player with a rating between 1800 and 2000 elo.

This doesn’t mean that it was impossible to complete all of them. Obviously, if I had used my time more efficiently, things could have taken a different turn. That’s precisely why I shouldn’t have too many goals assigned for the next year. If you don’t know how to manage your time efficiently, you will likely struggle with deadlines and routines, just like I did.

I don’t believe that efficient time management is a skill that’s easy to achieve, it’s more of a mindset. While to-do lists and a strict schedule can help define your tasks and time, if you’re not motivated to complete your tasks and you feel unhappy with your workflow, then your strict schedule won’t last for long. That’s because we’re human beings, we’re emotional creatures.

I’ve noticed that it’s hard for me to concentrate my motivation on multiple goals, I’m a single-threaded person. I can’t efficiently do my job and listen to music simultaneously or watch something in the background. All these things will just distract me from my current task.

I Apply Unix Philosophy to Real Life

I used to contribute to around 10 open-source and commercial projects simultaneously, and none of them have gained any success so far. I believe the reason for that was my lack of focus on too many projects. I know it sounds silly, but back then, I believed that if you try really hard and focus solely on your job, you’ll achieve success. Maybe it’s possible for someone more talented, but for me, it didn’t end well. Now, I’ll stick with a lifestyle that suits me better than anything else, I’ll do one thing and do it well. When I say “do one thing”, I mean not distracting myself with anything else during the process.

When applying Unix Philosophy to real life, the most important thing is to understand what that one thing is that you have to do well. For example, you shouldn’t limit yourself from reading some additional features that might possibly boost your development, it’s very tricky, and you might spend more time processing what the scope of my “one thing” is. Still, you shouldn’t care about it if it doesn’t affect your time too much. It’s always about balance. Nothing bad happens if you do something out of scope as an exception for something urgent or for a reason to understand the scope itself.

When you cook your meal, don’t scroll through Reddit or watch nonsense on TV. Concentrate on preparing ingredients while boiling your noodles, in fact, you’re doing two things at the same time. You’re still cooking a meal, so when I say do one thing, I mean cook the meal. Everything within the scope of cooking the meal is exactly that one thing you need to concentrate on.

When you concentrate on one job consistently for an extended period, you’ll inevitably become very proficient at it. That’s why applying the Unix Philosophy to your life can accelerate your mastery of a skill.