We're doing too much shit with not enough time
stop making priorities (plural) + can we murder multi-tasking?
Listen to me read my newsletter here:
We’ve got a lot going on right now. When I say we, I mean you, too. Maybe it’s the season, the holidays, our rush to get it all done before a longer break.
In last week’s newsletter, I tooted my own horn about doing less when it comes to Christmas stuff. Now I’m wondering if that was all for naught. As I write now, I called BS on myself. Even though I’ve protested doing Elf on the Shelf because it’s another thing to do, I still find myself here with too much shit going on.
I know the life I lead is one I created, completely self-inflicted. What I have going on is a product of my own doing. I chose to be a wife, a mom, a homeowner. I chose to write a newsletter with an arbitrary deadline I made up. I chose to have a podcast, also with a weekly publish schedule we put on ourselves. I chose to take care of the 1 million animals who live at my house for free. I chose to have a bunch of other goals and aspirations I haven’t listed here.
When we are in the pursuit of too much, important things slip through the cracks and we find ourselves in vulnerable positions, face down, trying to scavenge what’s left in our reach.
In one month, I’ve managed to fuck up a lot.
My husband and I forgot our wedding anniversary (Nov. 20) only to remember it 8 days later when my sister reminded us of it. How romantic.
I drive a teacher’s kid from our school to the local preschool and one morning I made an appointment on the other side of town. In rearranging my morning, I forgot to take the teacher’s kid to school. Icing on the cake is I didn’t even realize I forgot until later that night.1
I missed a doctor’s appointment because I put it in my calendar incorrectly. If you ask my podcast co-host, I fuck up scheduling interviews and appointments on our digital calendar 60% of the time. I think I have a disease.
I forgot to eat lunch one day. For those who know me, I do not skip meals on accident. Ever.
I rushed home Wednesday afternoon for a massage for me and my neighbor.2 Sweaty and flustered, I checked with my neighbor when the masseuse was coming. Answer: same time Wednesday of NEXT WEEK.
I’m in a fortunate position. I get to work on projects that I love and, while I pursue my passions, I have gone overboard.
Would you like to join me in trying to do less? It is not easy. It comes with baggage, way over the weight limit. And, of course there’s a fee.
Let’s unpack it.
Many of us cannot/have not/will not easily peel ourselves from our many commitments, our jobs, the tasks we have to do, want to do, and are burdened by. We know we need to jump off the hamster wheel but we’re stuck spinning.
I assume a big chunk of our society is living and breathing burnout and they don’t have a single clue they’re suffering.
Conceptually, we know we take on too much. Why are we gluttons for this behavior? Can we bite off only what we can chew? I know I need to slow down, say no more, and stop multi-tasking. These are easy to write but hard to execute. Isn’t that sad? In our modern world, we’ve been programmed — or maybe we’ve programmed ourselves — to have and do too much.
We live in a society where we think we can have it all but it’s drowning us.
The Internet shovels so many ideas into our minds. We have all the information at our fingertips and we consume more. We see influencers showing off their lives and make us strive for more, to do more. We buy more with scarily relevant ads. We click more because it’s easier to click for the next thing than to focus on one thing in our real tangible lives — like the friends we can hug and the family whose eyes we can look into when we connect with them IRL. Why do we listen to podcasts when we wash the dishes? Why do we watch YouTube when we eat a meal? Why can’t we truly do one thing at a time? Why is it so hard for so many of us to monotask?
I don’t have answers for you. However, I wanted to share a question that was asked of me recently.
Can you think of today’s priority? There’s a catch. Just have one.
In a recent yoga class, one of my favorite teachers talked about the history of the word priority and encouraged us to come up with only one priority because that is how the word was intended — not plural. As a priority list maker, this was a difficult exercise. My mind was spinning as I sat on my yoga mat, unwilling to let go of the 4 other top priorities.
In the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, he gives us a little history lesson on the word:
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.
Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things. […] the impression of many things being the priority but actually meant nothing was.”
As we scavenge for extra time, maybe we stop all the things we are doing.
What’s your priority right now? I’d love to hear from you!
If you feel like you’re the only one with too much shit going on, you’re not alone. Here are newsletters from folks I subscribe to, all published this week. Do you see a theme here?
Too many pots boiling at the same time by
What if... we do have time? by
so busy by
Speaking of time, I decided to take a longer break from writing my newsletter, maybe a month, maybe more, maybe less. I’ll decide when it’s time. I want to soak up the play time with my family over the break. I want to work on other writing projects I’ve put to the side.
In an effort to not be mad at myself for having “too much shit going on” I’ll probably publish bi-weekly in 2024 because I’ll be starting a yoga teacher training at the end of January. I’m excited to learn and be a student again.
Happy holidays.
If you’re wondering, that sweet little boy was driven by another parent. I still don’t know if his mom has a voodoo doll of me at her bedside.
Yes, I know the optics of this. A massage at my house is, in fact, bougie.
One of the things that upsets me about Substack continuing to offer more and more features is that they become the expectation, and then we're expected to do more without wanting to. It's the same with Facebook. By the time I left, I was expected to do video and posts. Here, I'm expected to record my own audio, no video, and also write articles. As somebody with chronic illnesses, I can't do that.
Every time the expectation moves on, I am left behind because I just physically can't do a lot of those things.
I feel this post in my bones. I think about how much time I wasted trying to learn Reels or pivot to video on IG, only for it to really go nowhere. It was just *too much* and now I wish I could get all of that time back. 2024 will be the year of stepping back from a lot of things and I am genuinely looking forward to it.