Wrestling With Your Brain’s Priorities?
(An excessive, imaginary dyad.)
I’ve caught myself, many times, saying “I really should be doing ____.” Sometimes that’s fine, but I have a tendency to do it a lot. (Sidenote: I liked the “too many tabs open” sentiment in this header image, but like, what’s with the fall theme? What?)
Anyway, it turns out that it’s really easy to create a long list of things to do. It’s also really easy to convince yourself that all of those things are important — even critical to accomplish.
Tell me if you’ve had a conversation like this one in your own head:
Brain: “Hey, do you ever think you should be better at life?”
Me: “Well, yeah, all the time. I have a whole blog about it.”
Brain: “You have a whole blog about it? Well, you’re really not that good so we should get crackin’ on some things.”
Me: “Yeah, I guess you’re right. What should I do?”
Brain: “Well, let’s come up with a list of things that smart, impactful people do.”
Me: “That sounds like a good idea!”
Brain: “Well, let’s start with diet and exercise.”
Me: “Diet and exercise, right.”
Brain: “And really, if we’re gonna do this, we’d better be great at it so we should probably train for some kind of goal. How about a marathon?”
Me: “Wow, okay. Doesn’t that require a lot of training?”
Brain: “Sure, but it’s not a big deal if you’re working on it every day.”
Me: “Okay, what else?
Brain: “Since we need to be a good citizen, we should be reading the news every day.”
Me: “Right, that makes sense. But it can’t just be one source of news, right? We don’t want to develop a bias.”
Brain: “Bingo. So let’s pick a bunch of news sources and give them your email address so they just send you articles to read on your time.”
Me: “Yeah, that seems like it would work.”
Brain: “Okay, and since creativity and productivity are muscles, we should probably throw in some kind of creative, high-output habit to the daily routine.”
Me: “Oh, yeah, I guess that’s true.”
Brain: “How about writing every day?”
Me: “Every day?”
Brain: “If you don’t do it every day, what’s the point? We’re talking about habits and excellence here!”
Me: “Okay, let’s add that in. Well, I guess that’s kind of a lot.”
Brain: “Whoa, did you think we were done already?”
Me: “Um, well . . . ”
Brain: “Look — smart, productive, healthy citizens of the world do much more than this. We haven’t even added how many books per month you need to read or how many volunteer hours you should give. When was the last time you looked over your budget to make sure you’re spending on groceries is reasonable? You’re still cooking all your meals at home, right?”
Me: “Um, well . . . “
Brain: “Oh great. This is worse than I thought. We haven’t even talked about how much time you should be spending on practicing guitar, learning a new language, meditating, and reaching out to old friends.”
Me: “Um, well . . . “
Brain: “And you’ve said you always wanted to learn Jiu-Jitsu, right?”
Me: “Well, yeah, but . . . “
Brain: “Oh, no sir, no buts. This is about achieving your dreams! This is about becoming the best version of yourself!”
Me: “But won’t I have to give some stuff up if I’m gonna make all this happen?”
Brain: “What? No way! We need to keep adding more! If you can dream it, you can do it! Let’s add in travel and culture. We should always be cultured, right? When was the last time you went to the Art Museum?”
Me: “Uh, I’m not really sure.”
Brain: “You’re not sure!? What do you mean!? Did you even know there was a limited access Chihuly exhibit running right now? Please tell me you knew about the Chihuly exhibit at the museum.”
Me: “Well, no.”
Brain: “Are you even serious about this at all?”
Me: “This really seems like a lot. I feel like these are all reasonable things to seek on their own, but putting them all together like this is pretty overwhelming.”
Brain: “Yeah, sure, but don’t you think you’re just making excuses?”
Me: “I . . . I actually don’t know. How can you tell the difference?”
Brain: “An excuse is something you say to stop yourself from doing something.”
Me: “But, isn’t it more nuanced than that?”
Brain: “Do you want to make this happen or what?”
Me: “I do! I do.”
End scene.
Rowdy applause.
Confetti and fanfare.
This might sound ridiculous and rambly, but this is actually how events unfold in my brain. And for the record, I DID see the Chihuly exhibit because I do just happen to be cultured. Your brain probably has some similarities and I think the main point is that it’s literally impossible to do everything and especially if it’s all at once.
There are only a few things we can do to get more done:
- Move the gears faster.
- Produce things of less quality.
- Do some of the things at the same time (parallel processing).
- Do some of the things now and some of the things later (serial processing).
- Eliminate some of the things.
Outside of this list, there really isn’t much we can do.
It’s crazy how much time we spend on creating the list of tasks and managing the list of tasks. For some reason, we just don’t spend as much time thinking or developing a system for vetting tasks in the first place.
We plan according to capacity.
One of my favorite questions to ask of a task or project is “what will happen if I don’t do it at all?”
Truly thinking through the consequences of not doing something can often lead to a realization that there is no short- or long-term consequence of any significance. Sometimes it’s easier to just eliminate a task or a project altogether.
Oof. And that’s the hard part. In theatre, there’s a messy process that literally involves printing out pages of script and cutting lines of text with scissors to shorten it. It’s called “killing the baby.” It was your baby and now you have to edit it. It’s not fun.
If you’re a painter, it’s similar. You’re constantly wondering if this brush stroke is the last one or if the painting is already perfect and even one more brush stroke will ruin it. Also not fun.
When do you stop? What do you not do? What a terrible question for a bunch of overachievers.
I think I heard about the “don’t do” list from some of Ben Franklin’s writing. (I could be wrong about this, so jump in the comments and correct me.) At some point, in the process of listing out all the things you need or want to do, you must prioritize just a few things that you can work on right now. That’s your to-do list. Everything else is your “don’t do” list. This seems pretty useful, but it still focuses on generating all the tasks with no vetting, first. The vetting comes later and it’s based on capacity — a potential weakness in the process in my opinion.
The reality.
The wrestling match with our brains is real and I don’t ever really expect it to stop. There are some systems and guidelines we can put in place to mitigate it, but there’s no real solution.
I’m also optimistic that my practice of minimalism (something I’ve been working on for several years, now) will provide some support to this process as well.
At the moment, I’m watching my own shift in philosophy from a focus on volume and output to a focus on quality. It’s more interesting to make a few amazing things than a ton of pretty good things. Hence the new, weekly blog posting schedule.
There are a million things we could do. There are a million things we even desperately want to do. Still, we have to pick. And we can’t let capacity be the only dictator. We must use other values like quality, quantity, impact, and fun to help us decide.
We’ll never have enough time, so that can’t be the reason we stop. We’ll never have enough money. We’ll never have enough of a team. We’ll never have everything we think we need — so giving yourself permission to let go of these things is critical.
It might be more useful to think about what impact our work might have — or whether it’s just the right thing to do — and then do that.
