YOU CAN DO (ALMOST) ANYTHING, BUT NOT EVERYTHING

“I’m so overwhelmed.”

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"There is no way I can get everything done.”

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“I just don’t have time for that.”

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“If only I could do more.”

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If these sound like you, I want you to imagine you have a new desire in life. Your passion is now to take water from twenty different glasses, put the water in your unique bucket, carry it to another location, empty the bucket, return to the glasses, and repeat until all the glasses are empty. There is also a timer hurrying you, indicating you have a time limit to empty as many glasses as possible. Oh, and the bucket has holes in the side, limiting the amount of liquid you can carry.

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Of course, this challenge is not anyone's genuine life desire (if it is, I sincerely apologize for offending you). It, however, is a metaphor for your life. The glasses represent all the things you've ever thought about doing and really want to do in life. One glass is the foreign language class, another is raising a family, and another is writing the next great American novel. The bucket represents the maximum capacity of accomplishment for each trip that you feel like you should have. The holes in the side of the bucket represent your actual achievement capacity. The timer? Well, not to be morbid, but the timer represents how much time you have left on our dear planet.

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So, how does one attack the bucket problem? For Type-A individuals like myself, the instinct is to empty as many glasses as quickly as possible. "Empty them all. All at once." was my philosophy on life goals for years. I operated under the strategy of "because you want to do all of these things, why not do a little bit of everything?." Metaphorically, I was taking a bit from each of the twenty glasses and pouring it into the hole-laden bucket, with some of the liquid undoubtedly spilling out. Which liquid? I didn't care; I was making progress, baby!

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The "making progress" notion came crashing down harder than the notion of Michigan Football being an honest program when, upon turning thirty-five, I became a rolling cliché and contemplated my life's accomplishments until then. As a chronic journaler and goal-setter, I could look at my past life goals and gauge my progress. Upon reviewing these goals (and after recovering from laughter at some of them, like "a millionaire by thirty," Whoops!) I realized that I had, in fact, not made much progress, baby. Sure, I inched toward my goals a bit, but I abandoned the pursuit of most of them without even putting in a serious effort. Learn a foreign language? I tried at it for two weeks, then "fin." Lose twenty pounds? I lost self-respect when my weight went up instead of down. As I looked through my journals, I noticed that these incomplete goals were always a part of a plan to achieve eight to ten goals during whatever number of weeks the young and ignorant me had set. Essentially, I had taken a communion-wine-drink amount of liquid from each of my twenty glasses and failed to make noteworthy progress on any specific one.

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All of these unaccomplished goals would be fine if it weren't for that damned timer ticking down. It was clear that I had a choice. I could either continue down this path of doing some of everything or focus on emptying a few of the glasses. If I try a bit of everything, I may drain some of the smaller glasses and achieve the more manageable goals. A bit of everything is not the best plan of attack if I want to empty the "oh my, those are audacious" glasses. I need to focus on those first rather than spending my time with the smaller glasses.

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In life, we must deliberately choose which glasses we want to empty and which glasses we can let sit. There is no right or wrong way. You may have no significant goals that would overflow your bucket. You can then empty your glasses by doing a little at a time. That sound you hear as you're reading this is my envy of you coming through the screen like that girl from The Ring. You may only have big glasses and need to focus on one at a time. Either way, the timer keeps ticking. If we don't decide, life's Chief Justice, known as time, will do so for us.

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Before I go into how I handle the "too many glasses and not enough time" problem, I must confess my biggest struggle in this scenario. I, and other Type A's, refuse to acknowledge that my bucket for shuttling the liquids back and forth features holes (yes, I am the one who told you it has holes in this scenario). I can pour as much liquid as I want into the bucket, but once the bucket's contents reach the holes, I can fill it no more. Any extra contents spill out, and you can't take that liquid to the other side. Outside of this analogy, doing this comes as overloading oneself. I have, at times, sacrificed health, relationships, and well-being to such a degree that my behavior negatively impacted what I was trying to accomplish. I? temporarily put more holes in my bucket. Even though the results were never good and took days or weeks to recover from, I repeated this overload-burnout cycle many times until I ultimately had to ask myself a tricky question:

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Will I acknowledge the holes in my unique bucket, or will I keep trying to fill this thing to the top to no avail, watch the liquid spill out, and never accomplish what I want?

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After ignoring the social media productivity gurus and the lore of people who slept four hours a night, I set some guardrails for myself.

?I designed these to keep myself on track and not slip into the unhealthy habits outlined above.

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My guardrails are as follows:

1.???? You can only attack a maximum of three goals at a time.

2.???? You must stick with those three goals for at least a month.

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Three Goal Maximum

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You can only attack a maximum of three goals at a time.

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I borrowed this from James Clear, which has worked well for me. This guardrail works for several reasons.

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First, it reduces the likelihood of you overfilling your bucket, and even if you do, this will allow you to make tangible progress. Instead of going in twenty directions, you only go in three. By limiting your choices to three, even if you overdo it or overfill the bucket, you will have still made more progress than doing a little bit of each of the twenty.

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Secondly, this guardrail works because it requires you to prioritize. Currently, Is writing your novel more important than learning to cook? The novel becomes one of the three, and you are now on a mission to put Dickens to shame. Becoming Gordon Ramsay will remain in your dreams for at least a while. Is there anything you see as a building block that will help you achieve one of the other twenty later? It could be remaining fit so you can do more later in life. That becomes one of the three. By selecting only three goals, consciously or not, you are figuring out what is truly important to you.

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The Month Requirement

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You must stick with those three goals for at least a month.

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This guardrail was self-instituted because I am a breaker of my own rules. The Three Goal Maximum was killing my "do everything and be Superman" mindset, so I would change goals every week. Sure, I had three goals, but I only had the same three for about five days. Changing goals like this nullifies one of the points of the Three-Goal Maximum: to focus on a few goals rather than trying to do everything all at once.

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To counteract this tendency in myself, I instituted a "one-month rule." This rule is simple. I must pursue each goal for at least a month. At the end of that month, I will sit down and evaluate each goal. If the goal continues to be worth pursuing, I will continue it into the next month. If not, I swap in a new goal for the month, being sure to stay within three total goals.

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I hope that this article brought you some value. While the realization that I can’t do everything all at one time and may never achieve all of my goals was quite the painful one, like many painful events, it proved transformative. I have embraced my limits as a human rather than pushing against them (ironically, someone born with a limitation took thirty-four years to realize this). You should consider doing the same; it may help ease those constant feelings of being overwhelmed or never feeling like you are enough.

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on.?But that's not what it means at all.?It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are." – Warren Buffett.

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Take care of your bucket. Stay focused. I'll see you next Monday.

This article was also posted on jakedenham.net.