“Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”

Josh Billings

One of the most profound lines from J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” is uttered by Bilbo Baggins. “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

I have always loved this line, probably because it hits so close to home for me. Butter spread too thin doesn’t add much value to the bread. How much of our lives do we waste trying to spread ourselves too thin, attempting to “do more,” and instead of creating more value, we end up barely making the impact we are truly capable of delivering.

Rather than trying to cover and be everything, perhaps we should learn to use less bread? Maybe we simply need to learn to say “NO?”

Think of it this way; how does the bread taste when it has too little butter on it? Does it create an appetite for more? Instead of accomplishing our desire to “do more,” we might just be turning people off to what we have to give…