What Is Your One Thing?

Rilke's Take on a Modern Conundrum

Dear friends,

I’m happy to announce that I’ll release an audio version of my newsletter starting today. Thank you to those who’ve written to suggest this to me — I always value the feedback, and it makes me happy to deliver it in a new form for those on the move! I have set the newsletter to music as it compliments the ideas and words. I’d love your feedback on this. I feel this is the right approach, but it’s always useful to hear people’s preferences. In advance, thank you!

This episode is also a little celebration as this is the 25th episode of the Podcast! Despite fewer releases lately, the download numbers have remained steady, which has been both a surprise and really heartening! This is due to the energy I’ve received from you to help me launch it. I’m so very thankful for the support and encouragement — as you know, it’s what keeps me going!

Love Jim

What Is Your One Thing?

“Be like a postage stamp—stick to one thing until you get there.”

Gary Keller

What is the one thing you are working on that takes precedence above all else?

For many of us, the answer is more difficult than expected.

Why?

Because modern life inundates us.

Not only are we pulled in many directions by life's demands, but our attention is increasingly fragmented.

Silicon Valley commodified our longing.

It cracked the code of human consciousness, discovering that our endless quest for answers was an inexhaustible well.

By monetizing this, they tapped into a well that would never dry.

In Greek mythology, this was known as the Cornucopia, the horn of plenty, which provided an endless supply of food and milk.

For Silicon Valley, social media is The Cornucopia: an endless stream of attention, data and profit.

And yet, it played a trick.

It exchanged our capacity to find answers with an unceasing search for something else.

The capacity of the human condition to look inwards was replaced with the search outwards for something nameless — like treasure at the end of the rainbow.

Rilke understood this in 1902.

When a young artist wrote to him asking if his poetry was any good, he replied:

“I beg you to give all that up. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. There is only one single way. Go into yourself…Ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative then build your life according to this necessity.

The problem we have nowadays is that we struggle to hear this voice because even in the middle of the night, we are invaded by the infinitude of yesterday.

An effect of this is that we fragment.

We are drawn into the multiplicity.

The allure of serial roads.

It becomes a hard task not just to choose one, but to go through the sacrifice of opportunity.

That is, to say no to one thing and double down on what matters most.

It is something I’ve been wrestling with personally, and it is something that I am trying to address.

While doing so, I’ve had to take a hard look at myself.

Hence, the question posited at the start of this newsletter is directed at me:

What is the one thing you are working on that takes precedence above all else?

It surprised me how much I resisted answering it.

Why?

Because if you ask it sincerely you may find what you most want is the very thing you most avoid.

At the start of the year I confronted the questions needling me:

Am I done with music?
Is music done with me?
Will I ever write a song again?
Would it matter a dam to anyone if I did?
Has the marketplace already placed its judgement, and if so, would it not be prudent to listen?

Simply put:

Should I walk away?
Would that not be the smart decision for my life?

At first it was difficult to listen to these questions.

Again, I turned to Rilke:

We have no reason to mistrust the world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses those belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.

It mirrored my own inner journey, tussling with abstractions that took vague form as they emerged from the dark.

Through it, something I did not expect happened.

I found zero cleansing.

I could hear myself.

Not what I should do.

Not what the world was telling me to do.

Rather, that voice Rilke refers to:

I know no advice save this: test the deeps in which your life takes rise, at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create.

This is the point:

To discover a clear answer, you have to ask the toughest questions.

We avoid the demons because we think they come to haunt us.

Yet when we face them, we find they carry what we most need—the question we least want to confront.

That is the spearhead of growth.

I could legitimately have turned away from music.

It would have been painful but I would have at least faced and addressed the question — rather than living in the shadow of its haunting.

What I didn’t anticipate was that, to do it, I would have to remove bricks from other parts of my life

Because at some point you have to ask youself:
Am I doing this or not?

When I was struggling earlier in the year, it was because I had set out on the course without reconciling with what it meant.

I am still working that out.

However, within the competing demands of life, this realisation helped me:

This is the one thing I am doing for me.

It does not mean the rest of life falls away — far from it.

Instead, it means that I know:

1. What to safeguard

2. What to prioritise

3. What my purpose is

I’ve discovered that to move one thing forward often means sacrificing other things — or at least putting them on the backburner or accepting they will take a secondary place.

While being resolute about this, something else happened that I did not expect.

Focusing on one thing creates a genuine sense of momentum. It’s now October, and it has taken most of the year to build this impetus. As a result, other aspects of my life are now surging forward in its slipstream.

Why?

Because saying “yes” to what is most important uplifts you psychologically.

The very act of knowing that, for better or worse, success or failure — you are doing what you need to do — starts to shape your inner life.

Given how hard I found the early months of the year (wrestling with starting the project, juggling work, feeling isolated etc) this has been an uplifting experience.

Simply put:

There are rewards you cannot anticipate from reckoning with Rilke’s voice at midnight.

This is not about creativity, poetry or dreams.

This is about listening to ourselves and, by doing so, living in a way that extends from that voice.

When fitting a project around work, life and modern distractions — being crystal clear about that one thing is enormously helpful.

Sometimes, you must converse with the voices you least want to hear to visualise that.

They come not just to challenge us:

But to help us clarify.

What is the one thing you are working on that takes precedence above all else?

Have a great day, everyone, and see you next Saturday!
Jim

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A short video explaining the secret of how I move projects forward:
WATCH HERE