Expanding the Core
Last week on Sunday Success I was noodling on the topic of protecting your core. I’ve had a couple of rough weeks, and the best I could muster was to do my job, and maintain daily posting. I determined those things to be my core, and they are what I protected.
As I slowly emerged from the depression and concomitant lethargy, I began to reengage in my other daily activities, regular workouts, brisk walks with the boys, research for my upcoming course, etc. This is what I mean by expanding the core; moving outside of those things you must do, as a minimum, to keep pushing forward.
While I’ve been addressing this in terms of riding out the roller coaster of depression, the lesson can be applied to any endeavour;
First, define your core, second, master your core, third, expand your core.
It goes directly to something Scott Adams wrote about in Loserthink, How Untrained Brains are Ruining America, that is, staying in your lane. Or not. Basically, he wrote that people who “stay in their lane” are rarely the ones who make a major difference.
The lesson I took from this is that you should always seek to expand your skill stack, and that once you have got a firm grip on the skill you are presently working on, start working on another one. In other words, get out of your lane.
Or, to put it in my terms, expand your core.
As a concrete example, my core, my one thing, for this year is to expand the reach of my voice.
- I’ve always been a decent writer, but I wanted to be a better writer and I studied writing to accomplish that.
- I’ve gone through periods of regular posting, but I wanted to be a consistent, daily writer, so I learned to be a faster, more efficient writer so I could accomplish that.
- More and more people are consuming their arts, entertainment, and hobby interests by podcast and I am learning to do that.
- More people are consuming their content on their phones than ever before, and I’m building a phone app for that.
- The bat flu has the market for web based learning exploding, and I’m learning how to provide that.
All of these things are in my core principle for this year; reach a greater audience. Yet, each successive one takes me further away from simply writing. Ultimately, my core must be redefined to be a communicator, not a writer, and to expand my reach, my voice in whatever direction will allow me the widest audience.
This is expanding my core. How about you?
What is your core?
What can you do to expand it?
