Your energy scatters and shatters

Running around the forest putting a few chops in each tree doesn’t work. 

It’s too labor intensive for not enough reward. It’s too confusing to keep track of all our progress. It’s too enabling to our fear of failure. It’s too difficult to feel a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. 

And it’s too infuriating when we circle back to tree number one and discover that new plant life has grown back where our original chop used to be. 

But because we’re impatient, uncommitted, flighty, frenzied and fractured, that’s what we do. We try to clear the forest through a thousand scattered chops. And we end up giving up before a single tree falls to the ground. 

The good news is, there is more than one way to clear a forest. One option is to build an axe big enough to cut all the trees down in one fell swoop. 

That’s called a clearinghouse. A central lever that allows us to integrate and converge everything into one cohesive whole. 

Another option is to find the biggest tree in the land, the mother ship that gives life to all the minions, cut it down, and hope that all the other trees fall down with it. 

That’s called a catchall. It’s the single stone that kills all the birds. 

Of course, you could always contract a deforestation team. Which is wildly effective, but it’s also expensive and leads to catastrophic flooding and global warming and obliterates the wildlife and angers the environmentalists. 

The final option is something I learned from the most popular video game in the history of the internet. 

Minecraft players, I discovered, never use their diamond pickaxe to clear the forest. Even if it’s the sharpest tool in the box. Instead, they use their fire to blaze up a few trees, and then stand back as the fire spreads from tree to tree to tree, thus demolishing the entire forest in minutes, without their direct involvement. 

Not bad for a bunch of teenage gamers. 

The point is, the way we’re working isn’t working. If we want to make our dreams a reality, we have to be smarter about our tools and shrewder about our toil. 

Otherwise we’ll be too scattered and shattered to make those trees come down. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS… 

Are you trying to clear your forest in the most efficient way? 
LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!