One thing I do
Paul, the runner, writes from prison
Paul writes from confinement, but his language is all motion — a runner leaning into the track. He refuses to be defined by what is behind him, whether his failures or his credentials. One thing I do, he says: forgetting what lies behind, I stretch forward to what lies ahead, pressing toward the goal.
Not ten things. One thing. The power in Paul's life was not breadth but concentration — a single, clarifying aim that organized everything else. Leaders dissipate themselves across a dozen good pursuits and arrive nowhere with force. Paul ran one race, and it carried him to the end. Vision narrows before it propels.
“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.”
— Paul, at the end — 2 Timothy 4:7 (WEB)
Focus is power. A single, clarifying aim organizes everything else; a dozen good pursuits scatter a leader’s force until nothing arrives.
“Brothers, I don't regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do: forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Paul could say one thing I do because he had made peace with leaving good things undone. A leader formed here learns the discipline of subtraction — refusing to be defined by past failures or past credentials, and concentrating on the one race set before him. The inner work is the courage to narrow.
Name the one thing. Give your team a single, clarifying goal that orders their priorities, and protect it from the crowd of lesser good ideas. Let go of what is behind — old wins and old wounds alike — so your energy points forward.
Capable leaders say yes to too many good things and call it ambition. The blind spot is mistaking breadth for strength, when concentrated force is what actually breaks through.
Write down the one thing you are pressing toward this season. This week, find one good-but-distracting pursuit and set it down to protect the one.
Leaders are rarely undone by a lack of good options. They are undone by too many — a dozen worthy pursuits, none of them pressed home. Paul's secret was subtraction: one thing I do.
If you had to name the one thing you are pressing toward, could you — or have you quietly scattered yourself across ten?