The Myth of Doing It All

In this issue: Why doing less can lead to more, a reminder about building sharp skills, why visuals matter, and what people remember about you (and it's not your words).

PJ Milani
April 18, 2025

🤔 INTERESTING

Illustration by milaniCREATIVE.art showing the power of focus. The top half features a single glowing lightbulb powered by a fully charged battery with the caption “You can do anything.” The bottom half shows five dim lightbulbs connected to a single drained battery, with the caption “…but not everything.” The visual metaphor highlights how energy spreads thin when divided across too many tasks.

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Let’s be real. It’s HARD to prioritize.

If you’ve followed me for a while, this visual metaphor may feel familiar. That’s because it’s not the first time I’ve articulated this idea. (check out this one if you’re curious)

The thing is most people (myself included) want to do everything all at once. But that’s a surefire recipe for feeling overwhelmed and frustrated at a lack of making real progress on any one thing.

The thing no one tells when you’ve got multiple irons in the fire is you’re probably going to get burned (out).

And as difficult as it is, one thing at a time is a far more useful approach to truly build momentum.

📐 DESIGN

A quick clip on why visuals matter

A quick argument on the power of clarity and why visuals are so important.

And if you want to be first to learn when registration for the next cohort of Thinking in Visual Metaphors opens, sign up for the waitlist here.

🔮 ENCHANTING

Illustration of visual metaphor by milaniCREATIVE.art showing the contrast between what we see and what we don’t see. The upper half (what we see) shows the top of a sharpened pencil labeled ‘sharp skills,’ while the bottom half (what we don’t see) is covered in pencil shavings, representing the hidden effort behind developing those skills.

See what people are saying on Linkedin

❝

Skill is only developed by hours and hours of work.

Usain Bolt

🧠 ANALOGY

Illustration by milanicreative.art. Bar graph comparing ‘volume of your words’ on the left—small bars with a confused figure—to ‘volume of your actions’ on the right—tall bars with a confident figure standing on top. A dotted line labeled ‘What people hear clearest’ aligns with the taller bars, emphasizing that actions speak louder than words.

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People hear your words—but they remember your actions.

The world is full of talkers, but the loudest statement you can make is in your follow-through.

🤓 MY NEW FAVORITE APP

Breakthrough thinking happens less at desks and more in what I call 'creative spaces'—where you can let your mind wander and connect dots.

A creative space can be an actual physical place (like a coffee shop), but I prefer a physical ACTIVITY (like walking) that invites thoughts to flow freely like a stream.

I used to manually make a workflow for this: step out on a walk, record myself talking out ideas on the phone, transfer files, transcribe, summarize, then attempt to connect insights from the thoughts. Was kind of a huge pain to do! 😅

That’s why I was pumped when I heard about VoicePal from Ali Abdaal. (shoutout to my buddy, Michael J. Boorman for recommending it). It streamlined my workflow into one app.

But what’s neat isn’t just the summarized transcriptions, but the follow-up questions it asks you. It feels like speaking on a podcast. Some of the questions aren't perfect, but I try and answer them anyway. It feels like strengthening your on-the-spot thinking—like weightlifting for your brain!

Voicepal gets to know me (both cool and…kinda scary?) Look at these questions about what I do!

Or use brainstorm frameworks to prompt your thinking

One limitation—I wouldn't use its output as “finished content” (at least not yet). But for me that’s not the point. The value you get is having a verbal sparring partner that challenges thinking with a bonus side-effect of getting healthy. To someone who spends way too much time at their desk, it’s a game-changer!

If you want to give it a try, you can get “10% off forever” with this link.

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