Too Many Interests? How to get REAL results in them. The Best Approach.

Summary

In the video, Vaughn Gene busts the myth that pursuing many interests results in mediocrity. He shares his personal experiences and strategies to excel in multiple fields by focusing on one thing at a time. Vaughn stresses the importance of starting with what naturally occupies your mind the most and leveraging focus and the 'confidence snowball' effect to gain proficiency. He further discusses concepts like 'max capacity,' the importance of mastering the initial challenge of a new skill, and when to reasonably add another interest to your repertoire. Throughout, Vaughn emphasizes patience, self-kindness, and the significance of converting habitual entertainment time into productive energy. By doing so, you can manage multiple interests and develop a diverse set of skills over time.

Highlights

• Vaughn Gene addresses the myth that having many interests leads to mediocrity. 🌟
• The 'confidence snowball' effect helps in mastering new skills by building on old ones. ❄️
• Convert routine entertainment energy into learning new skills for productivity boost. 🚀
• Maximizing focus by mastering one area before moving to the next. 🔍
• Endurance through the 'valley' phase leads to creative expansion and skill mastery. 🎨

Key Takeaways

• Focus on one interest at a time to achieve real results. 🎯
• Use your existing skills to build confidence for new ones. ⛷️
• Convert natural energy from entertainment into productive tasks. ⚡️
• Wait until mastering basics before adding new hobbies. ⌛️
• Get through the 'valley' phase to unlock creativity in your interests. 🏞️

Overview

In his insightful video, Vaughn Gene explores the complexities of balancing multiple interests and how to succeed in many areas without compromising quality. Busting the myth that too many interests result in mediocrity, Vaughn offers a refreshing perspective emphasizing focus, confidence, and gradual skill-building.

Starting with self-reflection, Vaughn invites viewers to identify what naturally captivates them the most and channel their focus there. He introduces the ‘confidence snowball’ effect, where mastering one skill boosts your confidence and ability to learn others. Vaughn himself shifted seamlessly from learning guitar to martial arts, demonstrating how skills in unrelated fields can enhance each other.

Vaughn stresses the importance of timing when adding new pursuits, advising to first achieve a certain level in one before juggling others. He talks candidly about dealing with initial struggles known as the 'valley' phase and transforming leisure time into productive energy. Ultimately, Vaughn advocates patience, kindness to oneself, and the acceptance of quitting what's not fulfilling, offering a liberating guide for managing multiple passions.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Myth Dispelling The chapter delves into the dilemma faced by individuals passionate about multiple areas, questioning the belief that diversifying one's efforts leads to lack of proficiency in any. Contrary to this myth, the author shares a personal methodology that has proven effective for excelling in various areas. This approach encourages readers to adapt these insights to their own lives, advocating for the value of being skilled across multiple fields.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Method of Focusing on One Thing at a Time The chapter titled 'Method of Focusing on One Thing at a Time' emphasizes the importance of concentrating on individual tasks sequentially. The narrator shares their personal experience on achieving success through this method, highlighting the tendency of becoming overly eager to tackle multiple projects simultaneously. They acknowledge that while excitement and energy are beneficial traits, dispersing focus across many tasks can be counterproductive. The narrative advocates for deep, singular focus to maximize effectiveness and outcomes.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Selecting a Starting Point The chapter focuses on the importance of choosing a starting point when incorporating a new hobby into one's life. It suggests clearing out distractions and bad habits to find what truly occupies your mind. Consider starting with activities that immediately come to mind, such as art, playing an instrument, sports, or sculpting.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Importance of Focus In this chapter, the speaker reflects on the significance of focus in one's life. They suggest exploring personal interests such as photography, tech, and graphic design, and considering what one would like to be known for. The speaker emphasizes the idea of focusing on what occupies one's mind the most, using the example of being recognized for playing the piano and guitar.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Gaining Confidence Through Skills The chapter emphasizes the importance of focusing on mastering one skill at a time to build confidence and competence. It highlights how focus is key to excelling in any domain, whether it's multiple skills or just one. The narrator shares a personal experience of having fluctuating levels of focus, from being great to poor and then reinstating it to a great level again.
• 05:30 - 10:30: Max Capacity and Energy Management The chapter titled "Max Capacity and Energy Management" emphasizes the importance of focusing on one task at a time to achieve success in any area of life. It acknowledges the various life obligations such as work, school, and family that can distract us from our goals. The chapter stresses that without dedicated focus, it is challenging to attain desired outcomes. It encourages readers to prioritize their tasks to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, gaining better results by concentrating on specific objectives amidst life's distractions.
• 10:30 - 15:00: Adding New Hobbies and Managing Time In this chapter, the focus is on the common issue of trying to adopt too many hobbies at once, leading to abandonment. It highlights the importance of focus in successfully adding new hobbies, emphasizing how concentrated effort can lead to rapid improvement in a single area. An additional concept introduced is the "confidence snowball," suggesting that becoming proficient in one area can boost overall confidence and facilitate growth across other areas in life.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Concepts of Valuing and Quitting Hobbies This chapter discusses the concepts of valuing and quitting hobbies. It highlights the idea that the skills and self-belief developed in mastering one hobby can carry over to new areas, even if they are unrelated. The narrative emphasizes the importance of discipline, focus, and perseverance in achieving proficiency, which in turn boosts one's confidence in tackling new challenges. The speaker uses personal experience to elaborate on the topic, indicating how these qualities have benefited them in various endeavors.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Summary and Final Thoughts The chapter 'Summary and Final Thoughts' reflects on the transformative journey of the speaker, who initially spent high school years engaged in activities like playing video games and guitar without much involvement in sports or languages. A significant shift occurred when the speaker learned kickboxing, marking a transition from previously sedentary hobbies to a more physically demanding pursuit. Through regular practice and sparring, the speaker experienced personal growth and development, highlighting the diversity of experiences that can shape an individual's journey.

Too Many Interests? How to get REAL results in them. The Best Approach. Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 when it comes to having a lot of things you're passionate about the main issue is just how many things should you try to get good at you may believe the common myth that if you try too many things then you won't be good at any of them but that's not true at all well I'm going to show you my method of what really worked for me as far as getting lasting results in multiple areas and hopefully you can draw some experience from that and cater it to your life so I'll start by saying that in my opinion it's better to be good at a lot of
• 00:30 - 01:00 things by going at them one at a time that's how I got where I am and I'm going to explain why this is really important especially if you're like me and you tend to get really excited and just want to jump into everything right away it's important to take things one at a time and really focus deeply on those it's not a bad thing that you have all this excitement and this extra energy to just dive into things that you really want to do but the problem with diving into too many things at once is that you have a limited amount of focus
• 01:00 - 01:30 that you're able to apply and you don't have momentum but I'm going to get into that in a second to start though as far as selecting a hobby let's assume you've cleared out everything in your life that tends to get in the way distractions bad habits and so on what would occupy your mind the most and if you can actually think of something this is probably where you should start that could be art that could be guitar and piano that could be Sports maybe you're into sculpting I read some comments from the
• 01:30 - 02:00 last video some of you are also into the things that I'm in which is cool photography different fields of tech graphic design things like that what would it be for you though and I would say whatever that is that's where you should start you could also think of this as if you were known for something what would that be so in my case I would want people to say oh that's V the piano and guitar player so that is what occupies my mind the most whatever ever
• 02:00 - 02:30 that is for you though I would highly recommend that's where you start so why one at a time what's the purpose of one at a time reason number one is focus I would say focus is the most important thing when it comes to getting good at multiple things or just one thing really if you don't have Focus you really don't have anything else and if your focus is really bad you can develop it to be really good over time I've been at a point where my focus was great it got really bad and now it's great again so I
• 02:30 - 03:00 know both sides of it you can absolutely build it up but this is the one thing that's going to actually get you good in whatever area you try to apply yourself to especially because we all have life happening around us you have work school family other obligations that you have to take care of if you don't have the focus to actually put in onto something that you want to do when you're not dealing with those other things you won't really get the results so this is why it's important to focus on one thing at a time there's probably times in your life life if you're like me where you've
• 03:00 - 03:30 tried to do too many things at once and you just kind of abandon them all at the same time this is exactly what I've done before and also another reason why I think this Focus aspect is probably the most important thing here also this focus is going to help you drastically improve in this one area and you're probably going to get good a lot faster than you think reason number two and this is kind of a cheat code to life in general but it's something I call the confidence snowball so when you get good
• 03:30 - 04:00 at something whatever that thing you had in your mind when you get good at that the next skill you pick up your ability and belief in yourself as far as your ability to pick up a skill get through the days you don't want to show up the discipline the focus all that your ability in those areas is actually going to carry over to the next thing you do even if it's not connected I'll use myself for an example I started out just
• 04:00 - 04:30 playing guitar this was in high school I didn't do Sports no languages nothing I was I'll put a picture of myself on the screen but I basically was into video games and playing guitar the first thing I learned outside of that was kickboxing and these are two completely different areas you know video games and guitar over the kickboxing is kind of a drastic change but something I noticed is that as I went to practice as I would show up as I would Spa a lot of the
• 04:30 - 05:00 confidence I had came from the fact that I had done this before I had gotten through those tough days on guitar or those days where I really didn't feel like showing up those days I can't really explain it but it really set something inside of me to where I was able to transfer that ability over just fine considering I was in Japan during this time I started learning Japanese after this and now I had the confidence from learning guitar and learning kickboxing to apply to the language
• 05:00 - 05:30 which I really needed because Japanese was the first language that I learned outside of English which is really hard for an English speaker and I really really noticed that though these fields are completely unrelated The Confidence from the first bled into into the second and into the next and even after Japanese into software engineering and other things that I do pianoo and a list of other things it's continuously builds up my confidence and my ability to to
• 05:30 - 06:00 just do this a lot better A lot smoother I really think without the prior Hobbies some of these things I would have quit on especially kickboxing MMA in general it's very hard but the fact that I could get to levels in those other areas that other people couldn't maybe not in a competition sense but you know what I mean that gave me the confidence and knowing hey if I stick with this just like the tough times and those other tasks I'll be able to get through this too and get get to that level that I
• 06:00 - 06:30 want to be at I bring all this up to say as you develop in one area and you're focusing on that one thing it's really going to build your skill developing skill I don't know if that sentence makes sense your skill developing skill your ability to develop new skills it's going to build that up so everything you pick up past that first thing or that second thing is actually going to come a lot easier even if it's not related now we're going to talk about Max Capac capacity this is really the big question
• 06:30 - 07:00 I get from people who see my Channel or just know me in real life how many is too much or how many should you get this will be different for everyone of course that's the blanket answer but I do want to say this is probably going to be a lot more than you actually think and I'll explain that in a minute I personally did not think at all that I would be able to do everything that I do today and actually keep up with it about 7 10 years ago I had no idea I would be
• 07:00 - 07:30 doing what I do now and you probably will be in the same position yourself maybe in a shorter amount of time I don't know but you're probably going to have that same realization like I did and even now I'm still kind of confused at my own life and I live my own life every day but I'm really grateful to be here and give you guys the information so that you can kind of do the same thing because it really is a good feeling when you're skilled in all the things that are in your mind and you're not just kind of wishing that you had
• 07:30 - 08:00 results anymore so to tackle this Max Capacity thing I want to bring up a image that I have in my head and I think of an ambient light like a light that's just kind of lights up the whole room but then you take that and you put it into a laser beam and you point it at one area I tend to see this as our energy and our Focus throughout the day and this is what really made it click for me as far as developing all these areas and how I really got to this realization was video games growing growing up I used to play video games
• 08:00 - 08:30 all day literally if you left me in my room from sun up to sundown I could be on the Xbox GameCube whatever Super Smash Bros fighting games Halo Gears of War all that stuff I would just switch from game to game and I could play non-stop I didn't have to eat I barely drink water barely moved I just play video games that's it my logic was this if I could sit there and play video games all day no breaks maybe one break to go I don't know get a drink of water
• 08:30 - 09:00 just so I can play more games why can't I apply that to other things that really came into play when I was in the military because I worked a lot we deployed we did all kinds of stuff in the off time I'd say well you know I used to play games after school and why can't I just do this now why can't I just play guitar when I get off work even though I'm tired or whatever and thinking about this I don't know if it tricked my brain or my body just started to believe me or whatever again this is all just my experience
• 09:00 - 09:30 I noticed that I was actually able to do way more than I thought this continued to bleed over when I got out of the military and I was living in Japan as a civilian because I would go to school and go to college there and then I would get off and I would still do other things still go to practice and I could keep it up and the whole time I was thinking to myself remember you used to play video games for 12 hours a day so just divide those 12 hours into productive things I hope this is making sense let me know if it's not I can
• 09:30 - 10:00 maybe articulate it better but it's like I don't want to say energy transfer but maybe that's the word to use I'm transferring that idea of me being able to play something all day or do something all day even longer than 12 hours sometimes into more productive tasks I say that to say figure out what you can do for a long time maybe it's a combination of things maybe you can binge Netflix while scrolling social media or also playing video games or
• 10:00 - 10:30 you're on YouTube all day think about that and how that is easily accessible and easy for you to do and as you start to pick up these things try to attribute that to what you're trying to learn I don't know if this works again I don't have science I don't have studies I don't have bar charts or any of that I just know in my experience this was something that really helped me out now I'm not saying detach from life that's not what I'm saying where you're just inside all day and you stop being in
• 10:30 - 11:00 touch with reality all I'm saying is that most days you want to limit that severely limit it or cut it off and just put that energy into something else because again the ambient light to laser it's really the same light it's the same amount of light it's just got to go somewhere rather than being spread out into different areas for no reason okay along the lines of Max Capacity when should you add on another hobby or interest again the answer is kind of a blanket answer everyone's different but
• 11:00 - 11:30 I would really say pay attention to when you're not finding it a struggle to show up that is one huge indicator I would say and another one is once you develop some sort of Competency in that area put more importance on the ability of showing up though I believe this is the key because competence is a everchanging goal in my opinion but the ability to show up is something that you can gauge right away another way to find this out
• 11:30 - 12:00 is if you feel weird while going a few days without it that's another indicator that it's pretty much attached to you at that point I remember personally for MMA in my sense are mostly kickboxing but when covid happened I was in Japan and most of the gyms shut down and for a while there was no lockdown rule but places with Close Quarters like that kind of just had to stop and everything was shutting down early so for me I noticed I think about 3 4
• 12:00 - 12:30 days in I was literally kind of scrambling like I didn't know what to do cuz I hadn't sparred anyone I hadn't trained with anyone it sounds weird but when you're not consistently fighting other people at least for me I feel strange only in the gym by the way not on the streets no violence but when I'm not training like that it does feel weird and I noticed that's because I was really attached to it the same thing goes for guitar if I go a few days without playing guitar or piano it
• 12:30 - 13:00 starts to feel strange so I say this for you to say if you start to feel that feeling that's a really really good indicator that you can probably add on something else so why is this a good idea to wait to add on something else once you're competent or once you stop struggling to show up to me it comes down to time if you can manage your time a lot better by not scrambling all throughout the day trying to figure out your routine you're going to be able to continuously keep that Focus and your mind will be clear that's
• 13:00 - 13:30 really the most important part your mind will be clear if you still find it's hard to show up and practice your instrument while you're trying to go learn graphic design on the computer then you now have to struggle in two different areas and you won't really have a clear mind but if you have your instrument practice on autopilot to the point where you don't even have to force yourself to show up now when you go learn that other thing I think I just said graphic design now when you go learn that other other thing it's not
• 13:30 - 14:00 going to really be that much of an effort okay some other Concepts to consider as far as adding these things on I know I said one thing at a time but I also understand we're human so on some days or whenever you just kind of feel like it or you need a small break try to dabble into that other thing that you're thinking about so if you're like me which apparently there's a lot of you if you play guitar and piano and you need a break and you want to go learn some Japanese do that just always remember that you want to continuously develop
• 14:00 - 14:30 that focus in the first area but try to just look at some other stuff in other areas too another concept is that every hobby or interest or passion or whatever has a valley and what I mean by a valley is that there's a time especially in the beginning where you're not really enjoying the process I think every hobby has a honeymoon phase where you're excited everything's new it's cool it's fun and then it drops off and reality
• 14:30 - 15:00 hits you're not good you're not where you want to be but you can see where you want to be that can inspire you but there are times where you just won't feel it you kind of feel discouraged once you can get through the valley though you get to a point where you unlock creativity and I believe this is the point that hooks you onto a hobby once you can unlock creativity in that field I like to call it the point of no return or the point in which you know you like it or not for example in Japanese
• 15:00 - 15:30 yeah I'm fluent now fluent I don't like using that word but I am um for a while sentences I had to think about them while I said them and I call this the valley because it requires a lot of brain work same with watching anime or something with no subtitles it required a lot of brain work and it's kind of discouraging because you're like man I don't know if I'll ever get it maybe I started when I was too old blah blah blah but then once you can actually say sentences without thinking that much and you can understand what you're watching
• 15:30 - 16:00 without really paying attention to it like that that's when the creativity comes up and you can start to say your own custom sentences you can start to look up whatever you really want and you can get into things that you really like and not have to deal with the basics that's the point of no return again and I would say this is when you get through the valley but it's important to know every Hobby in my opinion has a valley Japanese and you know a lot of you are musicians who watch my channel you have the times you have to learn the
• 16:00 - 16:30 notes you have to learn the scales you have to do a lot of drills dexterity work things like that it's not that fun sometimes and if you can get through that and get to the creativity part this is when the real fun starts so just keep that Valley in mind I think almost everything has it you just don't want to forget that it exists okay next I would say is to stay present but think longterm this is just another way to say stay focused on one thing at a time and use that momentum but understand that eventually it's going to work out for
• 16:30 - 17:00 your good because you're going to actually have results in these areas rather than just having surface level results and a bunch of different things the next one is that it's okay to quit if you don't like that thing I know we often see quitting as a bad thing but if you start learning guitar for example and you realize you're just not into it after you get through the valley preferably but once you realize you're not into it and you just want to drop it
• 17:00 - 17:30 that's totally okay I've done this with several things but don't be discouraged and thinking that you're doing something wrong or that you've given up and all that whatever you hear on the Internet it's just not for you so be okay with that the next one is just to be kind to yourself you know even this video there's a lot to unpack here there's a lot to do there's a lot in your life you may have to change cuz you might already be into too many different things and now you have to scale it down to one or you're still on social media a lot or
• 17:30 - 18:00 YouTube a lot that's fine just start to make these adjustments pretty soon and don't be too harsh on yourself if it's not happening right away and lastly always keep in mind the 99 and 1% rule it's kind of a little rule I made up in my last video 99% of the work is what you do and 1% of the work is stuff like this video or the courses or content that you're learning from always keep that in mind that all being said if
• 18:00 - 18:30 you're looking to teach yourself a skill and you're tired of being lost on the computer with all these sources I will have a link right here I think right here I don't know if it's not right here just click it it's going to be somewhere on the screen and I also have a playlist on managing multiple interests in general it goes over removing things from your life your belief systems and it'll probably include this video too or if you don't want to watch any of that you can get off the computer or the phone now and just get to work that's what I would really prefer you to do but
• 18:30 - 19:00 it's your life you can do what you want anyhow if you found this helpful you can leave a like helps the channel out a lot and you can subscribe if you aren't subscribed yet and if you want you can hit the Bell you know this is a lot to do but it's all right there you can just do it and if you don't do any of that I'm going to send this blue shell from Mario Kart to come see you and I'll see you in the next one peace [Music] [Music]