I came across this article by Tommy Chong, on how he got started in the entertainment business.
When we were introduced to the club manager, he said “Boys, there are two rules here: you eat in the kitchen, and you don’t mess with the waitresses.” I got the clear idea we weren’t to have sex with the attractive women! As you may gather from his opening warning, we looked like a fearsome punk blues band – and did indeed live the rock-n-roll lifestyle, we five rough Canadian brawlers. “So, where are the waitresses?” popped out of my mouth.
But we were really not right for this club. [...] That gig lasted one night before we were fired, but two of the waitresses, Joanne and Marlene, left with us. The next night, five gangsters came to see us at a Chinese restaurant while our drummer and manager Sonny was out looking for a new gig. Each of these enforcers had a baseball bat in hand and they took positions behind each of us. “We want the girls back.” It was a very tense moment, and clearly a consequence of our flouting the instructions to not mess with the waitresses. They took the two women away in their car, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Moments later, the girls ran back into the restaurant, announced they had hopped out the bruisers’ taxicabs at a stoplight, and had returned to stay with us.
That’s when we decided to get the hell out of there! We left the restaurant and piled everything from the Astoria into our bruised and battered Buick. All of our equipment and six people were stuffed in this sorry excuse for a vehicle, and as we pulled up to a red light, we thought we saw the gangsters inside a cab next to us! ...
Look at all of those things he tried, and did, and failed at, and made happen! It seems the zeitgeist of the present day is you have one big idea, one app, one major, one business model, relentless focus, one career, one specialty. And, I mean, there are people who are the best in the world at what they do, or at least right up there. And focus is important. But there is a time for focus, and a time for action. In the zeitgeist that often gets lost, I feel like there can be too much emphasis on singular focus and not enough emphasis on action.
Another way of putting it. What are you focusing against? Not what are you focusing on, I am not asking that. A lens is a thing in the middle between two other things. The thing that you are focusing on, and the film or digital sensor that is receiving the image. I posit that if the thing you are focusing against is your mind, and not your actions, you can burn a hole in it, metaphorically speaking.
Always keep shipping.