We live our lives on the hustle of trying to be able to do it all, have it all, and thrive in the process. We want to have a successful career, without having to sacrifice our personal life and our projects. We are super people that plan to be the absolute best and do the most in everything. And we do it in such a way, that we end up spreading ourselves too thin, or very much frustrated because in some areas of our lives, mostly in our personal lives, we end up falling short and having to cut our losses and make some sacrifices.
But is there a way for us to achieve it all? Most of us, just believe that we have to be more disciplined and manage our time more efficiently. But is that the center of the issue? Or are we missing something? A question that, in our busy regularity, we might not take the time to ask ourselves. Oliver Burkeman, a journalist and author, said many perspective-shifting things in his TedTalk. The first one that hit me, was “We’ve made busyness this standard by which we measure our importance” when I first heard it, I wanted to play skeptical and say well, not exactly, but who are we trying to fool… The modern person takes pride in saying, I’m busy, but I’ll try to make the time for that, and that does not apply exclusively to our work lives. How many times have we started the weekend with a huge to-do list full of things to get done around the house, or just movies to watch? The reality is, that the answer is probably a bigger number than we’d like to admit.
We live fast, we wait for less, and we act as if we are always running out of time… without realizing or accepting that we are, in fact, running out of time. Because time is the concept we are most aware of and unaware of at the same time. “We try to drive ourselves like machines, even though we are not,” said Burkeman, and we do so because we treat time as a box where we can fit things, but in reality, we don’t have anything other than the present moment, and there’s no guarantee of what could happen in the next one. But with this space concept of time, we get into the delusion of thinking we could and should be as efficient as a machine whose sole purpose is to do a task as fast as possible.
To some extent, putting our energy into doing it all in work and life, and trying to find a balance between those can look like an impossible mission to accomplish. On the On Being podcast episode called Time Management for Mortals, Burkeman said “this effort to sort of reach the state of feeling controlling and secure with respect to time, it’s not just that it doesn’t work, it’s that it seems to do the opposite of working. It seems to push the things that matter the most further and further over the horizon.” So I wondered, how can we get out of the rabbit hole? How can we have it all? How can we get on top of things so we can make space for what really matters? Because, at the end of the day, those are the answers we all want.
Ironically, the truthful and real solution I found was to recognize that We live in a deep state of denial about how finite our lives are. Yes, we go through our day as if we don’t have enough time because we actually don’t have enough to finish that meter-long to-do list we made that morning, or to finish our tasks… because, guess what, if you finish them, more of them will come your way, so it is a never-ending loop. We know that time is finite for that day, but we pretend we are not finite, that we will always have a tomorrow to do the things we want, to learn that skill, and share time with our family. So we make little choices that prioritize today’s work because tomorrow when we are done with work –which might never happen- we will have the undivided attention and spare time to do those meaningful things.
And it seems a little strange to see it this way, but the hamster wheel leads nowhere. Looking at ourselves as limited beings can be frustrating because, in this world where you have limitless access to information, you see the many opportunities you might have, you see the many things you could be doing, you see the many careers you could be pursuing. And to recognize us as limited in time will drive us to only one reasonable solution that we might not want to accept… you have to sort of pick a fight with the world, in a way, at least, in order to focus meaningfully on a few things.
Those things that we really want, that will make us feel like we are living a meaningful life, are hard to focus on and we might postpone them because they would mean that we are picking a fight and be reminded that we are limited. Because in life, every yes means a no somewhere else, and sometimes we don’t like to see those losses, even though we value more what we said yes to. But if we internalize that we are limited and we couldn’t do it all anyway because it is humanly impossible to do it all, it might be easier to get to the prioritization of our life.
So that’s just a relief because you can stop or ease up on beating yourself up about something that nobody could be expected to do. Recognizing, accepting, and embracing our small part in the big scheme of things will set us free. We might see this fact as depressing or pessimistic, but it just is… And it can bring a new perspective of life and time that helps you find a true balance within your life.
We want to do it all, but we are only human, and we don’t have enough time to do it all. So we need to do our best, knowing that it might not be all we expected. We need to be aware that life is happening now, and there is no dress rehearsal… this is the show. So what are you waiting to suit up and perform with all your heart?
