One of the pitfalls of social media and the modern world, is how easy it is to be tempted by something new, something different.

This temptation is so strong because of the learning curve of most skills and experiences. At the start of doing something new, you have a rapid learning curve. This quick progress drives a lot of positive emotions. The problem is that these positive emotions are often short lived, so you constantly need to do new things to feel good.

If instead you persevere on a few things, then three things happen:

• You master certain skills and thus have security that you can always fall back on
• There is a long term goal that leads to less intense but long-lasting positive emotions
• It is easier to define who you are as a person, your values, your morals and your path in life

Passions are not found, they are created.

The last point is important because most people don’t know what they really want. This is partially because people can’t seem to find anything which they are passionate about. The truth is the opposite – so many things in life are exciting and wonderful, that we don’t have the strength to commit to one. Yet, that is the only way to create a passion. To work on something beyond what most people would. To push past the rapid learning curve and be willing to put hours and hours of work into something with less instant gratification.

People procrastinate and make excuses that they don’t have passions when in reality they are just lazy or not willing to put the work to create these passions.

Every time you do one thing, you say no to another.

With limited amount of time on Earth, is it not better to always do new things and thus experience more of life? What’s so bad about quick gratification anyway?

These questions imply that doing many new activities is more satisfying then becoming a master of a few. But by doing new things all the time, you never get to experience what it is like to be the best at something. Or the top 1%, 0.1%. By saying yes to new things all the time, you are saying no to becoming a master at others.

There was an interesting TED talk on the study of life, where they studied a group of people for their whole lives. They came to the conclusion that the quality of relationships that people had was the biggest indicator of long-term happiness. However, I’m willing to bet that pride in the quality of your achievements is also a big factor in a similar way.

To demonstrate that – would you rather listen to the story of someone who produced a mediocre movie, ran a marathon in 6 hours, hiked many mountains and had 10 different office jobs in their life or the person who produced the award-winning indie movie, the person who broke the marathon record for their age group in their country, the person who spend years training to hike the toughest peaks?

It’s not to say that the first person is boring or that they should not be proud of their achievements. It’s to say that humans are more attracted to the “best of something”. How many people can name the top 3 male tennis players even if they don’t watch or like tennis? Most of the world. How many people can name top 10? Probably only the biggest tennis fans.

It is the dedication, not the result that matters

The advice isn’t that you need to absolutely get to the top at something. Most people are amazed by passions even if they are not world known. It is the dedication, not the result which is important. However, the correlation is there – those that have the biggest passions tend to be the ones who are the top in their field.

And if your passion is to help people, or volunteer with animals. There is no easy measure to compare (nor would you want one) but the dedication will be felt by others, and even more importantly by yourself.

The paradox of doing less leads to doing more

If you dedicate time to becoming a extremely good at something, you are likely to be able to monetise it and make significantly more money than others who are average at many things. This then attracts other people seeking your skills who are also at the top of their game at something else, thus creating opportunities for both.

Say you own the best marketing agency in the world and a famous basketball player wants to start their own trainers brand. They know your reputation and thus want to work with you. Now you are getting free VIP basketball tickets and experiencing things you would have never been able to, had you diversified your effort. But you have 50 clients from different backgrounds who may all offer something unique and suddenly, your life is wilder than it ever was because you spent all your free time on the computer learning the psychology of sales and marketing.

Having more money also opens doors. If you love to travel, you can do it on the cheap and it is really good. But anyone would lie to themselves if they said that having more money would not lead to more unique travelling experiences. If you are rich, you can travel cheap. If you are poor, you cannot travel rich.

Most people who say they do not care about money are those that could not make a lot of money and then complain about their life on areas where money could have solved those problems. The people who truly don’t care, normally have passions that either do not require a lot of money or they have enough money to fulfil it and save/donate the rest.

Some things should never be experienced

With 8 billion people, any thought, idea, or pleasure activity thought of by anyone is unlikely to be unique. Combine that with social media making the spread of ideas super quick, the opportunities for doing things is endless. The problem is that no one can truly escape the grasp of society judgement and actions have consequences. So by demanding the freedom to do things for the experience is generally not worth it because it would close many doors for other experiences.

There are many people in the world who have never travelled, never left their village, never done a skydive and they are some of the happiest people in the world. Why? Because they dedicate to what’s infront of them and don’t spend time dwelling on the what could be’s.