The Manure Principle
My dad’s blunt wisdom, Seneca’s ancient insight, and the modern battle for attention.
My dad had a saying he used when I was younger, usually when I was balancing too many things at once. He’d look at me and say,
“Son, sometimes you’re like manure — you’re all over.”
He wasn’t saying, “You stink.” He was making a point. Manure gets spread thin. And when anything is spread thin enough, it loses its effectiveness. It turns out, he was right more often than I wanted to admit.
Today would have been his 95th birthday. I love you, Dad.
What I didn’t realize back then was that his street-smart wisdom sounded a lot like something the Stoic philosopher Seneca said nearly two thousand years ago:
“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”
Seneca understood the need for focus, especially when things seem out of control. He lived amid political chaos, serving as Nero’s tutor and advisor, navigating dangerous personalities and shifting loyalties. His life demanded clarity about what mattered. For him, distraction wasn’t a minor irritant; it was dangerous.
In the end, the very emperor he mentored ordered him to take his own life. If anyone understood the cost of misdirected attention, it was Seneca.
And yet here we are, in a culture that treats multitasking like a badge of honor. The problem, of course, is that when we try to do everything, we don’t just get busy, we get frenetic. Think hyperactive squirrel on a caffeine buzz! Our attention fragments, conversations get thinner, and our work loses depth.
If you feel like you’re not showing up enough, not responding fast enough, not staying in enough conversations, you’re likely trying to be everywhere.
And when we try to be everywhere, we end up nowhere.
Seneca knew something we tend to forget: giving yourself fully to one thing always requires letting something else go.
So, what’s the fix? Thankfully, it’s not dramatic, but it will take continuous discipline.
It starts with ruthless prioritization. Know what actually matters to you and build your days around that. Resist getting caught up in the tyranny of the urgent. Instead of staring at a list of twenty tasks, keep three in front of you. Just three. Finish those, then choose the next three.
Guard your attention as if it were a finite resource. It is. Put the phone away. I’m talking to myself here, too. But if we’re going to be present, it will take eliminating everything that distracts us from the work that needs to be done and the people we care about.
Build boundaries. Real ones. The kind that keeps people from walking on your time or draining your energy. Don’t let others cross them, and don’t violate them yourself.
And then reflect, every day. Ask yourself: What worked? What didn’t?
What needs to change?
Do it at night or do it in the morning while you’re journaling — just don’t skip it. Reflection turns experience into wisdom.
A scattered life is like diffused light. It illuminates, sure, but only faintly. You need more and more of it just to see clearly.
But focused light? That’s a laser. Lasers are used to perform lifesaving surgeries. Lasers are used to secure buildings and protect important valuables. Lasers can cut through steel in short order.
That’s focus, and it’s what allows ordinary energy to make an extraordinary impact.
A life without it may feel busy, but it rarely feels meaningful. And deep down, we know the difference.
Because in the end, if we try to be everywhere, we’ll wind up getting nowhere.