How To Keep Your Balance When Life Gets Crazy

Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. And I mean the sky freaking opens. Too much comes at you all at once, and you wonder how the hell you’re going to handle it all and keep everything in balance. 

The typical productivity blog would tell you not to worry, for there are three simple steps to keep everything in check and push that water uphill. But I disagree. Sometimes there’s a flood.

When you’re faced with a nice, wide-open chunk of time – like a week’s vacation, or “every Saturday for a year” it gives you plenty of latitude to decide how you’re going to get everything balanced. But life doesn’t always hand those options to you. More often than not, you’ve got a tight schedule and a seemingly endless set of tasks.

Time is in short supply, and you’re just going to have to do the best with what you have. And that means dealing with a very uncomfortable truth:

You’re Gonna Have To Let Some Of Your Goals Go.

Yes. 

Difficult to accept?

I never said you’d like them. But you may be at the point in your life where you have to face this.

Perhaps the reason you’re so overwhelmingly busy is because you’re treating too many goals like musts, when in reality they are just shoulds or even coulds. 

And there’s nothing wrong with a long list of shoulds. 

Should are good.

But don't mistake them for musts.

Labelling everything as a must is a sure path to driving you crazy!

You Can Do Anything – Just Not Everything.

As much as productivity gurus would like to sell you on the “You can have it all” mindset, it’s just not realistic. You’d need a dozen clones and a dozen lifetimes to scratch the surface of what you want.

So maybe you want too much. Not in a “you’re greedy” way, but in a “why did they put pictures on the menu oh crap everything looks equally good I’m hungry for it all” way. But here’s the thing – you can only put so much food on your plate in one sitting. Too much and you’ll get full before you get a bite of everything.

And you can only stack so many goals on yourself before all you can do is take one bite out each one.

That sucks, but it’s life.

And if you’re so busy you can’t see straight … maybe you’re just too busy by design. Maybe life is exploding at you because you’ve over committed.

And the painful truth is that the way out of that isn’t to become “more productive.” It isn’t to chase after 100 goals that look equally good.

It’s realizing that all your goals aren’t equally good.

Some are critically good, like spending good time with your kids. Some are damned important, like building up a savings account to protect yourself against the economy (or to just get yourself the hell out of a career you’re not thrilled with). And some are important, like chasing this opportunity or this project or whatever.

The challenge comes when we forget that a lot of the things we think are critical … aren’t.

In truth, you could let a lot of important stuff go, a lot of important goals fade, and you’d be happier because you’re nailing more of the “critically good” ones.

Think about it this way – what goals, if you missed them, would make you feel like crap on your deathbed?

Chances are those aren’t what are causing you the majority of your stress right now.

I’m not telling you that you need to do anything right now, except listen to yourself. Listen to the rhythm of your day. Ask yourself if this is what you really want. 
Get honest.

And that’s how you start getting “balanced.” By realising that the reason things seem to be exploding, is because some things shouldn’t be on your list of goals in the first place.

More later. 

This is a lot to think on now.
That is all -
David

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