We can't do it all

This week we’re looking at how to decide what matters, let the rest be imperfect, and to stop treating our limits like a personal failure. If you enjoy this, please pass it along to a friend or colleague.

Some of the happiest people I know are exceptionally good at saying “no”.

They’re completely unphased by the idea that they might miss a great opportunity or the latest thing everyone is talking about. It’s because they know what is genuinely important to them, and they’re willing to cut almost everything else.

In fact, they might even relish the fact that they are missing something because they value the alternative more. They find a certain joy of missing out.

This is JOMO.

Most of us, however, are more familiar with its more demanding cousin: FOMO. The fear of missing out.

There is always one more thing to do, to watch, to learn, to buy, to improve or to consider. And this is a big part of the problem. I don’t think we need that one more thing on our plate… we probably need five fewer things.

That might bring us some inner peace.

The thing about peace.

We don’t find peace. We choose it. And we often choose it through what we ignore, what we let go of, and what we stop giving our energy to.

Bruce Lee put it more simply: “It is not daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

A lot of advice these days focuses on what we need to add. We should meditate, exercise more, drink more water, read more, sleep more, learn to use AI more, be more present with our kids, be more available for the workload at 8pm.

More more more.

Every piece of advice feels totally reasonable, but together they become another full-time job.

Peace tends to show up when we recognize that time, energy and attention are finite resources and we need to allocate them deliberately. Where we spend that time and energy matters. And so does where we stop spending our time and energy.

The impossible standard.

Many of us carry this inner vision of what a good parent, partner, leader, friend and human being is supposed to look like. The modern Instagram effect draws us to those perfect posts from others, depicting anything from healthy homemade lunches, a vibrant social life, happy family time, even a perfectly clean house.

Every individual expectation seems reasonable but all together, they’re damn near impossible. And this is where we might start confusing capacity with our character.

We assume that because we can’t keep up with everything, there must be something wrong with us. Perhaps we see ourselves as disorganized, undisciplined, lazy. And with that might come a certain level of guilt.

But we can’t do it all.

Sometimes we have to accept the truth that the load exceeds our available capacity. It’s got nothing to do with who we are and much more to do with simple mathematics. As for an analogy, let’s think about a washing machine. If we were to throw every piece of clothing we own into a washing machine so that it was completely jam-packed, the machine would not work.

Why do we think it’s any different for us as human beings?

Here are a few ideas that can help us let go or release things to lighten our load.

1. Every yes contains a no.

   A friend of mine runs three companies and I spoke to him last week about how he manages it all. He said that one of his favourite mantras to live by is: “when in doubt, there is no doubt.” If he is not 100% sure of the value of something on his plate, he simply discards it. His mindset is that every time he says yes to something that isn’t important to him, he is saying no to something that is. Every commitment has a hidden cost.

2. “Good enough” is a performance skill.

   Perfection is expensive and it will consume time and energy that may be better used somewhere else. Sometimes the store-bought snack, or the brief email is a sign of intelligent energy management. Good enough in certain aspects of life allows us to deliver excellence where it matters most.

3. Recovery matters.

   I like to say that recovery is a skill, but even self-care can become another source of pressure. We feel that we should add stuff like meditation, journaling gratitude practice etc. But sometimes recovery is cancelling something. Rest doesn’t need to produce to be valuable. Drop something to recover.

4. Accept the imbalance.

   Some days work wins, and some days family wins. Other days our health must win. One aspect of resilience is identifying when the imbalance has lasted too long. One difficult week is normal but we also need to pay attention that it doesn’t continue indefinitely.

Put the big rocks in first.

Here’s a story about focusing on what really matters. A teacher fills a jar with large rocks and asks the classroom if it is full. Everyone says yes.

He then pours in smaller stones, which settle into the gaps. He asks again whether the jar is full. The students again say yes. Then he adds sand. And finally he adds water.

Now it is full.

This isn’t to demonstrate that we can always add more into our lives. The real lesson is that the order matters. If the sand goes in first (in life that means the small stuff like emails, useless meetings, doomscrolling, distractions from notifications) then there’s a lot less room left for the big important rocks of life: our health, relationships, purpose etc.

We can’t fit it all in, but when we decide what the big rocks are and protect space for them first, the smaller things can find their proper place, or be left outside the jar.

What are we putting in our jar right now, and would we change the order?

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré at Resilient Minds