Can You Have It All?

I have been thinking about Michelle's Sometimes you can't have it all... post all week. Especially the title. So many people (including me!) have the issue of being too busy to get everything done and feeling terrible and emotionally drained because of it.

I'm thinking that a solution may be a combination of prioritizing and forcing yourself to no longer feel guilty once you've set your priorities. People should be able to achieve all their goals, but probably no, not all at once. So write a list. Most important/time sensitive goal at the top, down to the ones that are okay to take a while to achieve. Then focus on goal number one. If you have more time, add goal number two. Keep going down the list until you run out of time or start achieving your goals.

The key? Don't feel bad when you put one goal aside to work on another. Stop torturing yourself for not achieving goal #5 if you only have time to focus on goal #1-3. Once #1 is done, you can work on #4 and then #5. You should never feel bad for not doing something IF the reason you can't do it is you are working on something more important.

Using Michelle as a simplified example, let's say the goals are 1) Health, 2) Career, 3) Money 4) Free time (to keep sane/sleep properly etc.) 5) House. (I'm not saying this is true or the way she should feel, just using her post as inspiration.)

In this order, if physical therapy and eating right means more time away from work, then Michelle shouldn't let herself feel guilty if it takes longer to get the promotion or her work takes a little longer to get done. Health is the priority, so IT'S OKAY if work is secondary to it. (Or if Michelle decides 1) is career and 2) is health, she shouldn't feel guilty for skipping the gym or physio to get the promotion. It's okay to take longer to get in shape or heal, because she has decided work is her priority.)

Whenever Michelle feels down about not having enough free time (ex. Commute) she just needs to remind herself that her career and making money are her priorities. If she valued free time more than career and money, then she could get a lower paying job closer to home. But she doesn't, so accept that having less free time is the sacrifice she CHOSE to make. If she feels her priorities shifting and thinks maybe free time is more important than her career, then she can think about what changes she needs to make to have more free time (different job, move back to the city, etc.)

When Michelle comes home exhausted from work and hungry and sees all the dust that has collected over the last 24hours, she should not let herself feel guilty for making a healthy dinner and taking an hour to read and de-stress before going right to bed. Her health and her free time are more important than the house, so she should only let herself worry about whether or not it is Anne Swanson clean when guests are coming over for dinner.

So overall, once Michelle makes her health a priority, she will recover from her injuries and become more fit. Once she finds a balance in her health, it will be easier to focus on work. Once she's focused on work for a while, the promotion will come, and with it more money. Once she has saved some money and vacation days, she can take more time off work to relax, buy landscaping and furniture, and hire a cleaning lady so she doesn’t need to spend her hard earned free time on upkeep for the house. Viola - Michelle now "has it all" and is happy, and can start working on goals #6-9 that she put off for now. With patience and time she can achieve all her major life goals :) Obviously this is highly simplified, and real life is more difficult and complicated, but I think you see my point.

The list can shift, and leave room for it to, as long as you aren't changing it every day to meet your current whim/craving. Maybe reassess once a month. (Still tired and miserable? Maybe sleep needs to be prioritized over work.) And maybe put in a caveat where you are allowed to focus on #5 above #2 once a week or something so you don’t feel like you are ignoring #5 completely. (Once the guilt is banished, the hardest part is dealing with the frustration of having to wait to get all the things you want over a longer period of time...)

I'll put the theory into practice for a couple months and see how it goes. My personal list works a little more like Rock, Scissors, Paper. No one goal is my top priority above all else, because as I think about it, how I focus on a goal depends on context.

Simplified to three things, the goals I care about most are: having a good, happy, healthy relationship with Moose, editing and publishing my novels, and achieving my diet/fitness goals.

Between diet/fitness and Moose, I will pick diet/fitness. I will not go out to dinner with him, I will pick working out over watching TV with him, I will make him a little sad there is no junk food in the house and cook healthy meals he only tolerates because I am dieting. It helps that I have never been in a situation where me picking my diet/fitness over him has ever caused any big problems in our relationship.

Between Moose and writing, I will pick Moose. It is not worth sacrificing our relationship for my personal goal, especially when I can avoid having to make this choice by managing my time properly. I will focus on writing when he is not home, and focus on us when he is.

Between writing and diet/fitness, I have decided to focus on writing. Focusing on diet/fitness makes me reach my goals faster, but overall I am miserable and guilty for not prioritizing my dream. As soon as I decided writing was my primary goal, I suddenly stopped feeling guilty for not cooking as much and not torturing myself with too much Jillian. Even though I still feel bad for not meeting my fitness goals, I know I will still reach them eventually, since they are prioritized above other smaller things (like housework and socializing). I just won't reach them as fast as if they were prioritized above writing, but I have decided I am okay with that. It has relieved me of so much pressure, and it feels so good to focus on the thing I actually want to be focusing on.

TL:DR

So in summary, I think when we get overwhelmed by life, it helps to sit back and figure out what our priorities are. If we have taken on too much, it relieves the stress and guilt to decide what is worth sacrificing (for now) to accomplish the more important thing. The hardest part is allowing yourself to let go and forgiving yourself for being human with only 24 hours in a day so you don't constantly feel guilty any more.