How Many Things Have Your Attention?
Last month, we talked about doing one thing. This month, Mika admits she left the recording and promptly did the opposite.
And honestly? That’s kind of the point.
The ideas that distract us aren’t usually obviously bad ideas. They’re interesting. They’re useful. They might help the business. They might teach us something. They might even become something important. That’s what makes a side quest so convincing.
This conversation starts with Mika’s realization that she’s been distracted by a whole lot of shiny things while building Saint Management. But some of those “distractions” also led somewhere: she launched mikatashe.com and Dear Mika, a Substack that gives her somewhere to write about experiences and parts of herself that don’t belong under her agency brand.
Which leads us into a bigger question: when you’re the person behind the business, where does the business stop and you begin?
Susan has her own version of the problem. She loves her work enough that it doesn’t always feel like work, which means she can happily keep doing it all the time. So she bought a piano. Not for content. Not for business development. Just because she used to love playing.
From there, we wander, appropriately, into slow mornings, journaling, AI rabbit holes, finding your corner of the internet, personal brands, and the privilege of actually having enough time and space to follow an idea.
And then there’s the other kind of excitement: the win you share before it’s really yours. A story about a designer losing a celebrity project after publicly sharing the outreach turns into a conversation about client trust, confidentiality and knowing when something isn’t yours to announce yet.
Key themes
- The side quests that look suspiciously like work. The hardest distractions to recognize are the ones you can make a perfectly good business case for.
- Who you are doesn’t always fit neatly under your business. Sometimes another outlet isn’t brand proliferation. It’s a place for something that genuinely doesn’t belong anywhere else.
- “Time is my most creative asset.” Having enough space to think, wander and follow an idea isn’t something everyone gets.
- Having a hobby that doesn’t need to become content. Susan bought a piano because loving your work doesn’t mean work should get all of you.
- Some wins aren’t yours to share yet. Excitement doesn’t override trust, timing or someone else’s right to tell their own story.
We’re still not entirely sure where the line is between curiosity and distraction. Mika says she’s temporarily done launching things. Susan has imposed a three-brand limit on herself. We’ll see how all of that is holding up next month.
