One Thing

I feel like the “life lesson” that I have had the hardest time accepting is that you cannot improve every area of your life at once. There are times when every area of your life does improve at once (those are so great, but rare, in my experience often brought on by a dramatic life event like moving). But in general, there can only be one priority.

When it comes to the different aspects of life, certain things that are baseline – a level of activity that is “normal”. X hours a day or week or work. Y times a week in the gym, Z time with friends. But above this baseline level there are choices. An extra workout might take away from work. A bigger project or tighter deadline might mean less gym time. Giving that conference talk might mean skipping that long weekend away. Because there are 24 hours in the day, and I need to sleep for at least 8 of them. And 168 hours in the week means that if I choose everything I choose nothing.

I still kinda want to choose everything. But now I try not to.

Explaining this theory to a friend I thought, am I living by that, really? Because a couple of weeks ago I was saying my priority was work and here I am hanging out in NYC in the middle of the day.

And then I realised my true priority: for this year to be interesting, and to set me up for a more stable 2016.

I think I’ve been living out the “interesting” pretty well, but that trip I started to think more about what 2016 looks like.