The Focused Blur
What are you focused on these days? Why are you saving now? What is this drive inside you? It’s all good questions but leads to this focused blur.
‘Just as the technology to recreate a portrait has reached our pockets, so to has the ability to break up drive into reason or motive. We go, but do we go with conviction for purpose or for conviction of not being left behind?’
Ove Arup, the founder of Arup & Partners and now solely Arup, wrote ‘The Key Speech’ before it was significant or even before pen was applied to paper.
The confidence to know that it would become a piece of work read by hopeful new recruits decades into the future took some nerve.
Ove set out a set of aims, means and results.
He had a clear direction for his business and what it aimed to achieve.
Humane business and unparalleled engineering.
His focus was clear, not a blur.
Today, we find ourselves conquering life with a blunt knife.
Knowing with enough force we’ll make an impact but relying on quantity over quality.
This rather obsolete analogy is useful when trying to understand the circuit of the mind’s thoughts.
Indecision. Stress. Anxiety.
They are all as a result of trying to pick the best from a bad situation or trying to choose the ‘right’ path.
Ideally, we’d like to feel our way through life uninterrupted and unchallenged.
We go up the pay-grades by turning up and doing the bare minimum.
But only those who work hard get just desserts.
What if everyone perceives themselves to work hard?
Then who wins? The most wealthy to start?
This thinking leads to those circuits but is a rather soft way to approach it.
As I failed my Immersive Online Test for Deloitte today, I noticed that there was some text about automation numbers.
Automation meaning no more need for human capital.
It’s in our lifetime.
The technology is smarter.
The practical element being done by a human is becoming more irrelevant.
There are better, more mature versions of us out there, and they aren’t older rather younger.
If we’re focusing on a goal that will soon be wiped out, then why do we go?
Do we go because we have passion and will find a way to adapt?
Or do we go because we have to go?
We all see the homeless dress the streets of London.
It’s no surprise that we look down on them and wonder, sometimes why they got there or hoping we don’t end up the same.
The problem with the big city is that you’re only one number in the system.
A census dot to the wider population.
So you can be left behind and rather easily it must be said.
But you can have a voice, a direction, a vision.
Fuelled only by passion and vigour for otherwise it will be beaten down by the negativity that exists to remind you that you’re only a number.
Authenticity is key, if you can be honest to yourself, you will see some reward.
I’m not anywhere where I’d like to be just yet.
But I’m further along than I was.
My drive might be out of fear of not getting left behind, but if it was I would’ve burnt out much too long ago to be writing this today.
People will question your values.
The only way you respond with confidence is expect people to disagree and want to know more.
People say no.
People say you’re crazy.
And you might be.
But if you believe, you don’t expect anything and you hustle — your blur will be clear.
I feel sometimes I’m chasing a focused blur.
I have no idea what the end goal looks like but I’m grabbing all the periphery opportunities while stocks last.
It’s not because I’ve been lucky, although I have in other regards, it’s because I cared enough to look.
The focused blur