I came across a book by writer and business consultant Greg McKeown: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. I’m rather a fervent fan of the “less is more” approach.
Actually, to be frank, I came across a read that mentions Greg’s book. In said read, one of McKeown’s ideas is fleshed out: that the busyness of the go-getter can lead to mediocrity just as much as the lethargy of the lemming. Go-getters tend to throw themselves at every opportunity. The spray gun approach. Which invariably means they end up doing a lot of unimportant stuff, and often badly.
McKeown’s antidote for the over-zealous, A-type achiever wishing to avoid luke-warmness is the “90% Rule”:
When considering an option, ask, “does it score at least 9/10 on some relevant criterion?” If not, say no.
In essence, it’s a rather extreme boundary aimed at steering types like myself from doing the unimportant stuff.
The criterion might be “Is this fulfilling?” (ideally), “Is this exactly what I want?”, or “Does this align with the company’s values?” And so if a new opportunity comes around don’t consider