18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done Read Online Free PDF Page A

identity fails, the other ones keep you vibrant. If you lose your job but you identify passionately as a mother or a father, you’ll be fine. If you have a strong religious identity or view yourself as an artist, you’ll be fine. If you see yourself as an athlete, or even simply as a good, loyal friend, you’ll be fine.
    According to Dr. Rosenfield, this is an issue of mental health, even for the mentally ill. “People with mental illness often feel their identity is reduced to being mentally ill. Part of their recovery involves reclaiming other parts of their identity—being a friend, a volunteer, an artist, a dog lover, a student, a worker. It takes an active and bold effort to broaden and overcome the diminished sense of identity that results from dealing with mental illness, hospitalizations, medications, and one’s doctors saying, ‘You need to accept being mentally ill,’ without also saying, ‘But I believe you are more than your illness and you still have potential to do so many things in the world.’ ”
    Here’s the thing, though: It’s not enough to see yourself in a certain way; you need to act on it. Build it into your year. Your day. It won’t help if you identify as a father but rarely spend time with your children. Or if religion is a big part of your identity and yet you rarely engage in religious activities.
    One obstacle is money. For many people, an obsession with work is really about having enough money to support themselves or their families. How can we work less and still survive?
    Perhaps it’s the only way to not only survive but thrive. Stepping away from your work might just be the key to increasing your productivity.
    And having multiple identities will help you perform better in each one. Because you learn things as an athlete or a parent or a poet that will make you a better employee or leader or friend. So the more you invest yourself in multiple identities, the less likely it is that you’ll lose any one of them.
    Of course, if you do lose one, you’ll be okay because you’ve got the others.
    It’s useful to question the basic assumptions you have about yourself. Even the ones as ingrained as
Who am I?
or, perhaps more accurately,
Who are we?
Because, most likely, you’ll find all sorts of people living in you—people you never fully appreciated were there. And those under-appreciated aspects of yourself may turn out to be the keys to focusing on the right things—and getting them done. Seeing yourself fully, broadly, and clearly is crucial.
    And if you still believe that doing nothing but work is necessary to support your lifestyle, then it’s worth looking at ways to moderate your lifestyle so you don’t kill yourself trying to maintain it.
    Walk away from the email and have dinner with your family. Leave work at a decent hour and play tennis with a friend. Choose rituals that have meaning to you and do them religiously. Most important, be consistent—doing the same thing repeatedly over time solidifies your identity.
    A good friend of mine lost her job about a year ago, and I called at the time to see if I could do anything. My intention was to help her find a new job as soon as possible; I knew money was tight.
    I was pleasantly surprised, though. She told me she had decided to postpone her job search for a few months. She was pregnant and wanted to focus on that for a while. Once she felt ready, she would look for work. She was too busy creating an identity as a mother to get caught up in her identity as a worker.
    Eventually I received an email from her telling me she was back at work. “I love the job,” she told me. “It’s a great balance to motherhood.”
    Life isn’t just about some of you; it’s about all of you. Don’t negate, integrate.

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Why We’re Fascinated with Susan Boyle
Recognizing Your Own Potential
    S usan Boyle, who performed on the U.K. television show
Britain’s Got Talent
, captured the world’s attention.
    In case you missed it, she