Don't double book yourself.
It's almost never possible to do two things at once, and in the rare case it is, it's not worth it. I've been in multiple group calls simultaneously many times. Tried to participate in two in-person conversations simultaneously, or worked on other tasks while at an event.
It wasn't an improvement. You spend so much energy juggling, there's nothing left to participate.
Easy to avoid at least. Accept it's impossible, and schedule around it. Tell people to move things, or choose to skip. You can stack things sequentially instead of having two things in parallel, but it's better to have overflow time. Let yourself be there with time to breathe, not constantly on the fringe of leaving.
Still, if you must, you can split the difference. Don't let yourself check the time. Set an alarm for just before you need to leave, then trust it.
That doesn't mean to ignore time entirely. Do the good stuff first, cut off the mediocre early, but don't stop yourself because you feel like there's time pressure. If you spend the whole time rushing things, you'll get less out than if you hadn't gone at all. Better to wonder what you could have missed than to go and ruin it for yourself.
There's a part of me which is so deeply scared that I'm going to make the wrong choice. What to do, when to do it, how to balance the books to spend a life.
The obvious outcome is paralysis and indecision. This is the only definitively wrong choice. You learn nothing by failing to choose, you experience nothing, not even the assurance of autonomy.
As a rule, my life is better when I choose to do things. Defaulting to doing something has pulled me out of many a spiral. You could do much worse than choosing to maximize serendipity.
Even deliberately choosing to do nothing is better than failing to choose. There's power in knowing you could have done something, and you could make the choice to not, and not regret it despite knowing that you've missed something you could have done.
But when I can't even choose that much, when the choice feels impossible, the only thing I can think is that I cannot succumb to that worst outcome of paralysis. So, the only choice left is to indiscriminately choose everything.
Take it all.
Not because each option was worth choosing, but because it categorically removes the failure of paralysis.
What's the point in doing something if it doesn't matter what it is, only that it is?
There's times where it makes sense to focus on scraping above the baseline, on constantly juggling every choice simultaneously. It can even be a fun challenge. Running between events, knowing you have exactly enough time to get what you want out of it, has defined some of the best days of my life.
Running between events for the sake of having been there, not knowing what you need or how long you should stay, is awful.
It's no way to live a life.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
I had a draft of the first half bouncing around for a while. I hadn't realized the second half was about the same thing until last night.
I have more writing, more important, potentially life-altering writing that must be finished today. I'm cutting it very close.
But I had to get this one out. It's that late-night state of mind, where it's possible to think about things too vulnerable or big picture to conceptualize in the course of a normal day. Writing here has helped me come to terms with the fact that those thoughts are true, even if they aren't things I couldn't say in person.
I hope that's worth it.
- Rew