Quote:
Originally Posted by smallstar  Cheers,
I'm currently reading Napoleon Hill quotes, the term "one definite purpose" seems to be popping up over and over again. It sounds grand that you should have a purpose and sacrifice anything for it - but wait a second - this "anything" includes your friends, your family, your health, your nightly sleep, your sanity, your life and your soul.
"The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim."
This just seems plain ridiculous to me. Why should you have exactly one purpose to suck you dry? Why not 2-3 with purposes with equal priorities, why not 10-20 purposes with different priorities? Why can't you have a "balanced life, strong on all areas but emphasizing X and Y" as your purpose? Why can't your purpose be life itself? |
well in modern language, perhaps its a 'mission statement'...but i think he was referring to people who just drifted from one thing to another, never really committing - or people who just 'fall into' their careers.
granted things have changed a lot since he wrote that - people now not only change jobs more than in his day , but they change careers .....
Lets look at an example: walt disney, -
walt had one chief aim - it first came into being because he focused on making great cartoons - if he didn't focus on that he never would have pushed animation to the points that he did (and people forget he was adored as avant garde in his day because he was a great inovator)
eventually he expanded to live action films and reality itself (theme parks ect)
now what if walt just came to hollywood, tried stunt man one week, acting the next, editing the next...
now granted its good to explore and try different paths if you're not sure and sometimes one path can take you in a direction you didn't expect, but the gist is, focus.