Why too many options suck
Hello friends,
Today we are going to take a deep dive into the problems and chances with having too many options. This blog post will be a lot more personal than usual, and this time we will be doing things a litte different. You will understand why soon.
I want to be a musician that has a weekly blog post (this one here ^^), staying healthy and trying to live my best life. I also want to spend time with friends, my family and my girlfriend. The problem is, that there is too much to do, and my time management is dying.
Last Friday to this Friday, I used up most of my time either with spending time with may different people, working on school stuff, attending a networking event, doing a coaching call, doing creative work, or, with the little time that I had left, trying to somehow get sleep. From Friday to Saturday, I slept for 12 hours straight. And now I'm here with a lot of work that I still have/want to do.
I feel stressed in a way, that I have to juggle around a lot of things. And the thing is that I love everything that I do: I loved the networking event. I loved meeting friends. I had some of the most fun days with my girlfriend. I love this blog, I love music, hell, there is so much that I enjoy in my life.
Yet, my goals didn't really get much attention from my side this week. Don't get me wrong, I'm at least writing this blog post here, and I released my first song on YouTube, but the problem that I'm facing right now is how to use my time.
I feel like I'm suffocating slowly in the amount of tasks I could do. Not in a bad way, my mental health has never been this good in my life, and I feel happy: But there is so much to do and to achieve, and realizing that I can't become everything is kinda shit.
"You can do anything, but not everything.” - David Allen
I feel like I'm losing touch with my time. I feel like I'm not brave enough to use my time with the essential things. I should be focusing more on music, if I really want to get good in it.
The solution? I don't have one yet.
This blog post is one of the most egotistical things that I can do: We are going to work through a topic together: Instead of me just giving you all the tools to achieve something, we are going to work through that together. This time, it's not just me holding you accountable: You hold me accountable as well.
We are a team. Let's do this together.
Choosing the essential over the distraction
I think to avoid a struggle like this, it's best to define what's the most important thing in our life and then stick to that. I already got rid of most distractions in my life, or at least I thought so: I barely have any bad habits that steal my focus. The only thing that I still struggle with is procrastination. But also this one I can work through, because of the technique from this blog post.
The problem at hand is this: I have too many cool things happening at the same time. I want to be everywhere: Concert here. Social event there. Invitation here. Something new and interesting to experience there.
The solution from that is pretty simple: Get rid of everything that won't get you further to your goals.
The radical way would be to reject every possible invitation to any event ever, that doesn't help you directly in becoming the person you want to be. It would mean to fuck over your relationships, your health and happiness situation, just for the sake of doing your purpose.
Obviously, I don't want to screw all of that up in my own life.
But I feel like it's all about balance: Which part of your life is most important?
I like to split my life planning in quadrants: Health, Wealth, Relationships and Spirituality. I showed this concept once already in this blog post.
I feel like that you have to set a clear focus of one of those. For example, you could argue that blog-writing and music would be part of your wealth situation. Me attending a Freerunning event or trying out a dance class is for my health situation.
And for my situation in particular, I think I have found the problem already: I juggle around my focus day by day, while trying to do it all.
What do I mean by that?
I try to fit it in all at once. There is no focus time for blog writing or music (wealth stuff), no dedicated time for doing sports (health situation), absolutely randomly assigned times when I'll meet people (relationship situation) and nearly no time for myself (spirituality).
Even if you know what's important to you, sometimes it's just to comfortable to not act on it.
I have no plan that helps me stay focused on a task for a while, which means that my focus is all over the place. And without a structure, I invite excuses to come up with "more important tasks" then the one that I deep down know I should be doing.
Our challenge this week
In this week's challenge, we'll be doing some planning.
Ask yourself: Which part is most important for you in your life right now? Is it your relationships? Purpose? Your health situation?
Whatever you choose, I want you to do a one-hour stint three times this week.
Examples:
- Produce 3x music this week for at least an hour. (The challenge I'll be doing this week)
- Meet 3x friends this week for at least an hour.
- Go to the gym at least 3x this week for at least an hour.
You are not allowed to do two stints per day. If you produce music or hit the gym for 2 hours once, this counts as one stint (even tho you just spent 2 hours of time).
Push yourself to do the things that are important to you. This is the only way that we can achieve what we want in life.
Do you feel committed to this challenge? If you want someone to hold yourself accountable, reach out to me via Mail (kimzo.blog@gmail.com) and write "I commit to Why too many options suck"
My Song of the week
I'm making you all addicted to German songs. Those guys were known as "DieLochis", some YouTuber that I watched as a kid, and they create some music. Amazing.
Further Reading
Amazing concept that works well with this blog.
For those who really want to 180 their lives, here I'm going to share with you my XXL blog post once again.
Thank you so much for reading today's blog post. I wish you an amazing week! And let's get the important things done this week!
Much Love,
Kim