“The man who chases two rabbits, catches neither.” –Chinese proverb
It can be tempting to try to do multiple things at the same time. But doing so can cause us to divide up our focus, and we end up not doing any of the things as well as we could. This could range from trying to “multi-task” throughout the day, to trying to focus on too many larger commitments in a season of life.
This isn’t as much about how many things are on our to-do list as much as how many things we try to give our attention to at a time. Because in trying to do multiple things simultaneously we usually end up just diluting our focus.
Often our reason for doing this is we have a lot that needs to be done. But if we do one thing at a time, we’ll still get plenty done in the end. It’s just that instead of trying to do focus on multiple things at once, we decide to give our full attention to the task at hand. And when that’s done we can give our attention to the next thing that needs it, and so on.
And it’s this undivided attention—this focus—that ultimately helps us to do whatever we do well.