Some people advocate extreme focus. Eliminate everything except the most important priorities. I’m not sure I accept this philosophy.

Compare it to the people I know. Not everyone is a close friend. It wouldn’t be right to eliminate everyone from my life who isn’t a close friend. I like having acquaintances and non-close friends. It makes my life much richer. Having varying degrees of friendship is a good thing because I like the variety. Not only that, but my weak ties are better if I’m looking for a job. I can have friends I wouldn’t confide in, but I’d love to invite to a party. My parties would be very small if I didn’t nourish friendships that weren’t super important. It would be a sad life indeed if I only focused on the most important people.

So, I think it’s a good thing to have varied interests and varying degrees of interest. I enjoy football, but I don’t want to declare it important. I also don’t need to eliminate it from my life so I could focus purely on programming, or whatever else. Having varied interests makes my life richer and it also makes me harder to categorize. Furthermore, I never know what can inspire new thoughts. Inspiration for comics can come from anywhere. Dabbling in poker can help me meditate on the difference between process and results. This doesn’t mean I should declare poker one of my five most important things and commit all-in to it.