We’ve all seen the professionals that take our breath away. Athletes that consistently hit a ball with speed, power and precision in their chosen sport, such as tennis or golf. Ice skaters who defy gravity on the ice and rarely fall. We watch shows like ‘Dancing with the Stars’ where professional dancers glide across the floor with celebrities who try their best to give an outstanding performance but they usually just highlight the difference between themselves and the real professionals of the dance.
We viewers sigh a little sigh of pity and say things like, “Oh, he should have stuck to acting”. Then we throw them a figurative bone, “but he’s really trying”. The show gives viewers ‘behind the scenes’ looks at celebrities as they prepare and practice alongside their professional dance partners every day for six, seven sometimes eight hours a day. Sometimes the celebrity surprises us, but not very often. Unless the celebrity has had a background in dance, they really just look like their attempting to perform something that’s just not their cup of tea. (Really Geraldo Rivera…just really?!) 
See, you can’t fake being a true professional. The real dancers on the show glide across the stage in perfect timing with the music. The understand the dedication needed to make the most difficult dance look effortless. To get where they are takes a lifetime of dedication and discipline. It takes never giving up, even when practicing the dance is the last thing they want to do. You can be sure they get angry about it to, I mean who wouldn’t rather be eating a scrumptious dessert in your pajamas instead of forcing one’s self to the go the studio and practice for eight hours.
Yet, even though they may be truly angry about sacrificing their favorite chocolate cake and fuzzy slippers for leotards and dancing shoes, they don’t hate the reason they’re there, in fact, they know deep in their hearts that they themselves cannot live without the dance.
They live for the moments when a dance comes together. They agonize over music choices, choreography, costumes, make up, hairstyles, lighting and everything else that goes into the making of a truly spectacular dance.
It’s magical, those moments when they’re on stage and the dance comes together. Those moments when they’ve got the audience enthralled, when the music is right and the lighting just perfect – it’s at the precise point that the dancer truly becomes the dance.
Then it ends. The show is over. What is the dancer to do? The professional will be back practicing and perfecting their art as soon as possible, preparing themselves for the next breathtaking performance because they know, there is no other choice for them. Dancing is their life.
How does knowing this help you in your career?
Good question.
The answer to this is two parts: are you, in your career, doing the thing that you love or, have you found what you love to do but you’re doing it as a hobby and using your career to support your hobby?
Should you be one of the lucky ones that really loves what they do, it drives you every day and you couldn’t bear the thought of doing something else with your life. Congratulations! Yours is a life full and abundant.
Here’s our ‘time on task over time’ advice for you: practice the core of your talent, continually, fiercely and protect your time doing it. In our example of the dancer, the majority of the time was spent practicing the dance, in the studio. Our dancer wasn’t out sewing the costumes or setting the lighting or selling the tickets at the box office.
The focus was on the dance itself, time on time, over and over again till it was not only steps were memorized but a performance was created, one which told a story with movement and grace that few people could ever hope to accomplish.
Our dancer left every other detail to those folks who were qualified to handle them. Of course, we hope that those who were trusted with the other details were professionals at their trade too, but for this example let’s assume they were top notch at what they did.
Back to you. Should you be one of the lucky ones who can call their passion their profession then it is incredibly important that you put your focus on that passion. Day after day, moment after moment you have to feed your passion until it becomes a part of you. People around you shouldn’t be able to say “Oh, Sally, she does real estate for a living”, they should be saying “Oh, Sally, she’s a Realtor, you can ask her anything about the market and we trust her– I’d give her a call if I were you”.
Oh look, a referral! There’s one of the great benefits of time on task over time. It builds your reputation and people feel comfortable about mentioning your name to friends, coworkers and even family members. When you’re a professional, people trust you.
Now let’s say, you’ve found your passion but it’s not your profession. How do you build your talent while still supporting yourself enough to enjoy your passion?
It’s simple. You bring your passion to work. It can drive you in ways that you won’t even realize till it becomes part of your hindsight. You have to get to the point in your career that you can look back and say, “this is how I was able to make my life about my passion”.
I’ll give you an example. I have a friend who is a Realtor. She is brilliant at it and is very successful. She too, receives a multitude of referrals because everyone around her, and who has worked with her, knows that she is one of the best.
But her passion isn’t real estate. Her passion is in rescuing animal, mainly dogs, but she has rescued other animals as well. She’s amazing at it. She’s out in the middle of the night when she gets a call about a stray animal in need of rescue.
Then she shows back up at the office the next day listing homes and closing deals. You would think she’d be exhausted and irritated that her day job is interfering with her passion. But that’s not the case. In fact, it’s the other way around.
She puts the practice of time on task over time to use in her real estate career because that career allows her the funding and freedom of schedule to help the animals she so dearly loves. Without real estate she may not make the same money, nor would she have the flexibility of time in a 9-5 job.
She’s built her business to the point now where she has a team of people working with her, her profits are increasing and time is getting freed up to take her love of animals to the next level. Soon, she’ll be opening her own rescue and help many more animals in need.
She used her career as bridge to her life goals and she’s meeting them.
But my friend isn’t special per say, she’s human like you or I yet our difference is that she focused on building that bridge over time. She practiced, learned and performed until she got to where she wanted to be.
That’s the beauty of living your passion – there’s no limit to what you can achieve when you practice time on task, over time.
