God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. (Serenity Prayer)
Here are some reminders for myself around the things I can and cannot change and focusing efforts around my goals:
Things Tend Towards Neglect
Focus on the important things. What you don’t actively focus on improving will become worse over time. The rate of decay may vary, but it will continue. Meaning if you are a data scientist who does not stay sharp in technical skills, they will decline. If you are an athlete who stops working out, you will get more and more out of shape. If you neglect your current partner, the relationship will suffer. While this can see overwhelming when anxious, that everything declines, ignoring this fact is worse.
I used to go into these cycles of not taking great care of myself (e.g. around sleep or nutrition), where I would focus on getting a good sleep routine and things would be good. Then I would stop and things would slowly fall apart again. This would repeat and I would get more frustrated. Why wasn’t this problem fixed? Well, because the framework of a ‘solvable problem’ was wrong. A better analogy was that of a system that requires varying degrees of maintenance to work well. Like a car that needs a regular oil change – it’s not ‘solved’ when the oil is changed, it’s just in varying degrees of maintenance.
The important thing to figure out, is what pieces are worth more active maintenance and effort/investment. I value my relationship with my spouse, friendships/community, health (mental, physical, emotional), finances, career. Those are my ‘top things’. If my ability to skateboard or juggle decays, that’s okay! I can practice juggling or skating for fun if i want, but it’s not a key part of my value system. It’s okay to drop that plate. The other plates come first. It’s a matter of priority and then it’s corollary, maintenance via investment of time/energy. That is, the commitment (courage) to be responsible for (change) the things I can control.
It Takes Effort to Create Purpose
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Creating meaning in our lives takes work. Without that work (ie see ‘things tend towards neglect’ above) life can feel meaningless or without purpose (keep in mind, spirituality is a part of mental health!). Granted, purpose doesn’t have to be complex: ‘I go to work so I can eat and feed my self/family’ is totally good. Whether conscious or not, every action/choice has a purpose – even if it’s just responding to an impulse (e.g. taking hand away from fire).
I actually have a google doc with my own values/purpose, etc that I write out/maintain. It’s not a simple ‘the one thing I live for’ situation since that’s a rough way to live (see The Great Gatsby). It is helpful to diversify there, and not put all eggs in one basket. For example, if an athlete lives to play their sport, an injury can shatter their identity. But if they live to contribute to a sports community, then an injury might suck, but doesn’t send them spiraling into a dark depression. Because they don’t have to be on the field to be a part of the team/community. When things are tough, creating meaning becomes essential. When things are easier/better, it’s less important – but still useful.
Purpose often comes from values – which can help with principles around decision-making. Knowing what you value/care about vs not. That is helpful because it means decisions/problems can be broken down into components and each can be evaluated. For example, should I move to a new city if my partner got a new job there? Maybe the answer is yes because I value my partner and my own career and the job opportunities there are good enough. Or maybe the answer is no because my family and friends are here and I don’t want to start over somewhere else – so instead I end the relationship. Or maybe there is a compromise where we live apart for a while (e.g. if it’s a temporary thing, etc). It depends on WHY I live where I live now, and that can be broken down into a series of values that help with decisions like these.
Decision-making caveat
There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets. (Bill Turpin)
There is often not one silver bullet to make decisions / building purpose. An exhausted brain often looks for a simple solution, like ‘ask what my friends say’, etc – because you value your friends’ opinions. But that is really just one input. It takes work to create meaning/principles, and that work takes effort/energy, so sometimes decision fatigue is moreso about the fatigue/system maintenance to be able to build the capacity to create purpose in your life. A fatigued/overwhelmed brain will often give up the responsibility of creating a clear purpose and adopt someone else’s – which is totally fine! So long as when the time comes to choose they can differentiate the two (their values and given/’borrowed’ values).
Stay In Your Lane
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. (George Carlin)
There are a lot of dumb people out there, no question. However, humanity has a very broad distribution. Have you ever tried to get good at something competitive and measurable? Like playing an instrument or chess or online video games or a sport? People are VERY good at things – just look at youtube…. There are a lot of people on the high end of the distribution of skillsets. You probably are really great at something even if you don’t think of it that way, like being really good at playing with your pet cat in a way that makes them happy. A lot of people are really good at a lot of things, but on the other hand, no one is good at everything – everyone has strengths and weaknesses, areas where they would dominate and areas they would look foolish.
People can often be much better off focusing on fewer lanes – and to do that they need to know what those lanes are! My 20s was a lot of figuring out my lanes. My 30s has been about building more confidence in them. This is very in the realm of ‘accept the things I cannot change’ and recognize personal power / sphere of influence. Part of the effort involved in staying in our own lanes is connecting to primary sources of information. To be, rather than to seem, builds true confidence. As a weird example of commentary on a school shooting, a politician or newscaster talking about a school shooting has an agenda in the end (a secondary source), whereas someone who goes to the school doesn’t – they are a primary source of what happened / they are more trustworthy in their own lane. Their closeness to their lane makes them more legitimate.
Silly TL;DR: stop arguing online unless you or the other person are genuinely trying to learn. People either (A) know more than you, in which case you are the one out of your lane, (B) know the same as you, in which case it’s a moot point – there are no experts here, (C) You know more and are right anyway and the person you are arguing with is out of their lane and just arguing for the sake of arguing/getting a reaction, etc. In each case, focusing on your own area of expertise, or expressing humility that it’s not your lane, helps everyone.
Leave Space for Inefficiency
Shit happens. Just being practical: don’t be a perfectionist here. Unexpected things will come up, priorities get changed for goals, etc. It is much better to be focused on the right things than to get more things done / be more efficient. That is part of the value of the ‘wisdom to know the difference’ – that you waste less time on things you cannot control. But even then, for the things you can control, efficiency isn’t always one of them – so it’s important to leave some space for things to come up. If your goal is to get back in shape, an off day won’t hurt you, unless you get derailed or are too hard on yourself and give up. Remember: staying the course is not doing nothing.
I have a lot of ways to improve efficiency once I know what I want to do (writing down next steps for each goal, lowering barriers to work by breaking down problems, staying organized, etc) – but ultimately that is HOW to do things. WHAT to do can always become a big enough list that the HOW cannot make the time fit into a realistic day. It’s helpful to bake in some ‘slow’ time, rather than become too obsessed with getting more done with less.
Here is a great video on ADHD/introducing a ‘wall of awful’ concept for doing tasks – and how sometimes even simple things can sometimes be difficult in focusing on the things we can control:
Overview
I wrote this for myself primarily, so I’m not sharing it super broadly but I wanted to publish somewhere for my own reference. Summary points:
- Things Tend Towards Neglect
- It Takes Effort to Create Purpose
- Stay In Your Lane (humanity has a deep bench)
- Leave Space for Inefficiency (staying the course is not doing nothing)
Daeus Jorento 