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In a world of abundance and distraction, focus is the antidote to the scarcity mindset





What’s been a little unexpected about starting a new business, even a small one at such an early stage, is the number of interesting and potentially valuable tools, resources and ideas which become available. Many of them are free, or have a free version. Many of them are incredibly tempting, because starting a new business means learning a new micro-skill or insight each day just to get things running, and you realize how much you have to learn.


In many ways starting a company really is much easier than ever before; in other ways, the focus and consistency needed is much more difficult to achieve, with so many distractions and possibilities. Plus, I love starting new things (cue 4 fulfilling career / field pivots over the last 20 years), and the process of discovering, trying, creating, building, testing and consolidating. I love possibility and potential, and translating that into tangibility, and then putting that out into a broader reality.


But day after day I’ve been reminding myself to stick to 2-3 things. Strategy on any level is as much about what you don’t do, as what you do:


  1. Develop honest, authentic and valuable content, and get better at it (thank you to those who have sent feedback! I’m so glad you’ve found it helpful)

  2. Become a better coach and human, by improving my self-leadership, emotional awareness and interpersonal communication

  3. Dedicate time to learning how to better reach potential readers and clients who might find what i provide valuable

This is just for work, which I’m fortunate to love (more generally, I talked about my three daily habits for 2024 here). But it reminds me of a broader exercise for life, which I did four years ago, and which has remained consistent when I run through it each year: an adaptation of Warren Buffett’s alleged5/25 rule for productivity.


The top 5 things


The rule is that you essentially take the top five things that are most important for you to do, and everything else becomes the “do not touch” list.


In early 2020, rather than list 25 career goals, I listed all the things I wanted to do in life, in any aspect of life. All the experiences I wanted to have, all the achievements I wanted to accomplish, all the ways I wanted to grow.


Then I ranked them, from 1-49. I really wanted to cheat and have tied spots for #5, maybe squeeze a couple others in my top 5 by rewording them. But I didn’t, and over the past four years this list has helped me focus and refocus my efforts and resources. I had to let go of #6-49, and commit to NOT doing them. Every year I go back to this list, and the top 5 are pretty consistent, which means I was honest enough at ranking them, and I’d given it appropriate reflection. Every year I need to recommit to not doing #6-49, many of which I’ve forgotten, if I’m honest.


This exercise is relatively quick, and I also find it a great way to take a snapshot of what’s important to you, to celebrate what you have done, and to acknowledge how your priorities have changed with age and the season of life you’re in.


When I was in my teens this used to be things like - travel Europe, skydive, earn $X by Y years old, work in a particular field - a lot of ego stuff, fun stuff and external markers of success, which is pretty natural when you’re starting out and looking for signals and developing your internal compass for what’s important (see footnote). Unexpectedly, I achieved most of them except for two: bungee jumping and writing a book.


By 2020 my top 5 things had moved towards how I related to others and challenging myself to do things I never thought I could:

  1. Have strong and solid relationships with my partner, family and close friends; be a good partner, sibling, offspring, friend

  2. Be an effective and impactful coach or psychologist, continually getting better at empowering and partnering clients to pursue their own version of personal, career and mental-emotional health and success

  3. Be a successful investor defined by a growing and diversified asset and income portfolio, and a decent understanding of markets and dynamic for relevant asset classes

  4. Reach brown or black belt in jiu-jitsu before my body gives out (I have no idea why, but this has consistently been there for years. It’s 2 years and I’m still a white belt, but much happier just for having jiu-jitsu in my life - more on that another day)

  5. Write a book (this has been there forever)


Reality checks and the craft mindset


When you hit your mid- to late-30s, the idea of “my future” is no longer an ambiguous span of possibility; there actually is a timeline and you start to feel your limits. Energy dips, more obligations means less time, distractions increase, your locus of control simultaneously expands (compared to early youth) and shrinks (compared to the scale and complexity of the problems you’re aware of).


Focus requires discipline, and enables discovery: doing something well means being thoughtful about how best to do it, and understanding that getting there will take time. Taking these five things seriously was also a reality check. Having committed to focusing on them, I now had to confront what lay behind each of them, because I had given up 44 other things to get these five done.


A friend once said to me - “If you keep saying you want to do something, but you still haven’t done it after all this time, maybe you don’t actually want it that much.”


It’s no longer about checking a box, but more about what happens in the process of getting that box checked, and making sure that when it’s done, it’s something you’re proud of.


Sometimes it’s a daily practice - a box you have to check over and over and over again to make sure that at the end of your life, you can say that yes, you’ve really done it. You’ve really been a good partner or friend. Sometimes it’s that growth that comes from progressing 0-70% after decades, even if you haven’t hit the final 30% you wanted. Sometimes it’s about learning to enjoy the journey - writing a book takes way more effort and thought that I ever imagined once it moved from an abstract dream to an actual goal. I had to ask myself how important it really was. It now dangles at #5, just hanging on.


I would take the exercise a step further: for each of the five items, for a particular period or season, I try to focus on 1-2 actions I know I can regularly take to get closer to my long-term goal. Hence the 3 overarching actions for 2024 (owning my actions and emotions, focus on value of content and coaching, regular jiu-jitsu practice), and 3 points of focus for Deliberate Humans mentioned above.


Abundance vs scarcity mindset


This also means owning the goal as my own, regardless of what others are doing. I have to remind myself this multiple times a day - to stay focused on what I’m doing, rather than getting worried about what others are achieving. Comparison is distraction; envy, anger and anxiety are a waste of energy: I can only focus on what I can do, and trust that this will bring the outcomes I’m aiming for, rather than see red oceans everywhere.


Ironically, the abundance of free stuff fuels the scarcity mindset: the idea that we have to compete for limited resources. It’s where FOMO comes from - thinking we need to have more, know more, achieve more, try all the shiny new things, learn all the latest tools and software. It’s where comparison comes in: realizing there’s so much out there that we start to benchmark ourselves against the public parts of other people that we see. If so much is available to everyone, then everyone must be making use of it, then how can I not do so as well, or how can I stand out? If something (software, skincare, groceries) is going at such a great deal now, how can I not buy more than I need in case it’s not a good deal in future?

“Take a simple idea, and take it seriously.” — Charlie Munger

Focusing on the few actions and my top five values each day are a work in progress. But this focus has allowed me to know that when I adhere to these actions and values, I’m getting closer to where, and who, I want to be. That in itself has helped me move from functioning from a mindset of scarcity, where I’m constantly comparing and worrying and wanting more, to one of abundance.


One of my top five values is to have an abundance mindset, which I’ve been trying over the past year to cultivate. My take on the abundance mindset is: going through life believing that there is enough for everyone, that there will be enough for me in future, and that others having more does not mean me having less. It’s an interesting inversion of ‘A’ level economic principles, and most importantly a way of life. It’s also a new approach for me as a chronic visualiser-of-worst-case-scenarios. But several benefits flow from this practice:


  • I am better able to appreciate others’ strengths and have more positive interactions, rather than constantly comparing myself

  • I can focus on enjoying the process of giving, without worrying or calculating if it will get a certain ROI of effort, time, money, etc

  • Much less stress about scenarios that may never happen

  • Much more happiness, energy and time in “flow” state

  • A far less cluttered life, materially, physically, psychologically (also good for the environment!)



Action / Reflection


  • What are your top five things you want to do in your life? How badly do you want these? Do you know the other things you’re giving up in order to focus on these?

  • Are there areas you’re wasting your energy and time on because of perceived scarcity? What is one action you can take to develop a more abundant mindset?



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© 2025 by Lin Chin.

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