The Agony & Freedom of Focusing On One Thing
A lantern in the dark. Photo by Quinn Corte, 2023.
The Agony & Freedom of Focusing On One Thing
I recently caught up with my high school friend, Jenny, who bought a house in the Bay Area after an exhausting three-year hunt. This house, she assured me, was great but not perfect.
She and her husband contemplated bazillions of houses before this one. They also considered bowing out of the insane housing scramble entirely to move to the woods for a simpler life. But, eventually Jenny decided to stop entertaining all the possibilities and move full steam ahead with this choice—even if it wasn’t perfect.
Jenny then told me about the fig tree parable.
In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor…and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
There are infinite figs. There are figs of different career paths we might take, people we might love, places we might visit, homes we could live in. All of us have daydreamed about the roads we didn’t travel; the things we never did; the identities we could have had. But we can’t eat all the figs at once. Being mortal means we have to select one fig at a time and learn to live with the grief—and potential regret—of letting the unpicked figs shrivel and drop out of reach.
And when we do pluck a fig, we must savor it. “This is the fig for me,” we must tell ourselves. As we let the juice drip down our chins, we commit and enjoy the hell out of this fig, letting it nourish us.
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Overcommitting happens for a lot of valid reasons. My usual brand of overcommitting is being so excited that I want to do all the things at once: write my book, teach a class, plan a party, go on a trip. I have ten hobbies to try; four projects I’m ready to start; six friends I want to catch up with.
But I can’t do any of that right now because I just started a new job. I have to be okay with all the other figs falling away right now.
My one focus is that new job. I'm not just focused on the work itself but on being a person with a new job. A new job is mentally and physically draining. It requires my mind to be sharp and spongey, and my body to adjust to new routines, energies, and environments. My time lately is spent making hearty lunches, sorting out my new benefits, stealing small moments for exercise, getting enough sleep, and completely crashing on the weekends.
I’m often bitter about this—about not having capacity for other things. Because I selected this rather large fig, I can’t do creative projects or plan trips or make friends. But I have to admit—I feel a huge relief in holding one singular fig and not having to agonize over all the other figs. Narrowing my focus onto one thing feels really freeing.
When I do start resenting the job, it also helps to remind myself that I chose this fig. I have agency over the direction of my life. Furthermore, this focus is temporary. My current priority is to support myself as I start a new job. But in a few weeks or months as my job becomes routine and (hopefully) demands less mental energy, I hope to prioritize something else. When I finish this fig, I can choose another.
We go through seasons of life. Seasons when we need to focus on something precious or urgent or vital. Seasons of adjusting to a new lifestyle or loss or identity. Seasons of low capacity, illness, or grief. It helps to acknowledge when we're in a particular season and do our best to be present for it.
One of my Met colleagues once said in a meeting, “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything.” I laughed and immediately wrote it in Sharpie and hung it up. My new mantra.
I can’t do everything at once. I’m mortal and human (and tired), so I have to choose where my energy and attention go. If I’m not intentional about my focus, someone else—or the culture at large—will choose for me. So when I’m grumpy that I have to go to bed early and commute to work, I remind myself that this job is my main focus at this point in my life. There will be other figs later.
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One thing I'm trying in this big new job: focusing on one thing at a time. In a meeting with one of my direct reports? They have my full attention. Going to check on an install in the galleries? I stay for 30 minutes and then I go back to my desk, instead of bopping back and forth three times in two hours. Working on contracts? I block off an hour to deep-dive and don’t check email until that hour’s up.
It’s against our conditioning to focus on only one thing when we’re overwhelmed. When there’s too much to do, we feel the pressure to work on everything at once. We get into a hyper-aroused nervous system state where our eyes dart between emails and documents and what’s going on in the room.
I'm finding it so hard to break the habit of multitasking. But when I do pull it off, it feels revolutionary. Because I’m not frantically cramming things in, I’m not as drained at the end of the day. It feels easier to step away and take little breaks. And my work quality and information retention is better.
There’s a fascinating podcast where Brené Brown interviews neuroscientist Dr. Amishi Jha about how the brain focuses. Jha explains that the brain’s attention is like a flashlight—it can only focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking is a myth. When we’re multitasking, we’re actually swinging our flashlight from one thing to the other and then back to the first thing. It burns fuel fast and wears us out. In a world of algorithms, advertising, and ambitions, trying to uphold all possibilities and tasks at once is overheating our brains.
I once heard a teacher say that meditation is the same thing as focus. Find one thing to focus on—a mantra, your breath, the sounds around you, the feeling of your feet on the earth—and you're meditating. If multitasking divides the self, focusing restores the self.
As someone who's hyper-aware of her short life and all the potential figs to eat, I’m trying to be more intentional with my focus. One step at a time. One priority at a time.
One fig at a time.
Your turn:
What are you focused on in this season of life?
What are some of the figs you've passed up in your life? What are some of the figs you've chosen?
For the next chapter of your life, what figs do you need to make peace with leaving behind, in favor of moving ahead with a choice?
P.S. If you're wondering about my friend Jenny, she LOVES her new house. She says, "There are a million figs I'm sure would have been just as good if not better, but I'm so happy I just took the leap of faith and trusted my gut on this one!" Choose a fig and run with it, dear reader.
P.P.S. Cheryl Strayed's essay, "The Ghost Ship That Didn't Carry Us" is a gorgeous and practical essay about the necessity—and the loss—that comes when we choose one direction. She answers a question from someone who isn't sure whether they want to have children. You can find it in her book Tiny Beautiful Things.
P.P.P.S. Completely overwhelmed? One-thing-at-a-time can become your drumbeat. Oliver Burkeman suggests getting a small whiteboard and writing one thing you need to do next; an accessible bite-sized task. Do the task, erase the white board, write the next thing.