The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

When I was 22, I remember sitting down with one of mentors and eagerly telling him about all of the success I had building my company. Within minutes, I started telling him about a franchise I was getting ready to launch, an investment collective I was going to help expand, and an idea for a new technology company. Throw in the family obligations and my desire to maintain an active lifestyle and I was way over my head.
At this point, I had been engaged with my current company for a little over three years. We had received traction and a bit of publicity, but we were nowhere near our fullest potential. After patiently listening to all of the things I was working on or going to be working on, my mentor directed my attention to one of the most valuable leadership lessons I’ve learned in my life: the disciplined pursuit of less.
The disciplined pursuit of less is an essentialism theory that was coined by Greg McKeon. Simply framed, success is our biggest barrier to becoming very successful. Greg’s rationale is summed up into four phases:
Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.
For a couple of months, I resisted this thinking. I reasoned that these different opportunities were things I was supposed to take advantage of so I could be very successful. Overtime, however, something happened. I realized that my fundraising within my current company was slowing, transparency was decreasing, and morale wasn’t where I would’ve liked it to be. In that moment, it was clear that I didn’t have clarity of purpose.
I shifted gears after I carefully evaluated my priorities, my commitments, and my values. As I went through the personal reflection exercise, I started to let my values dictate my commitments and I began to make the difficult decision of letting things go. I learned that I had to say no more often if I was ever going to be able to say yes to the things that I wanted to do.
Less than three years later, my company is healthier and thriving. We’re on track to growing by 1,000% in the last two years. More importantly, I feel great. Are you willing to evaluate your life and make the sacrifices you need to be very successful? Are you willing to pursue less to do more?
Karim Abouelnaga is the founder & CEO of Practice Makes Perfect an evidence-based full-service summer school operator for urban K-12 schools that leverages a unique near-peer learning model to drive academic outcomes.

Source: TD JAKES