Everything at once

I have a sort of problem prioritizing things in my life. When it gets busy, I find it difficult to keep everything organized and held together. But the real issue arises when there’s nothing to do. In episode sixty-five of On Taking Pictures, a 5by5 podcast on photography, the two hosts, Bill Wadman and Jeffery Saddoris, discuss why “doing nothing is the enemy”. I can relate to their experiences because I too have a problem with dead days. It’s better to be learning and seizing the day (I just watched Dead Poets Society) than to recline in an office chair waiting for work to arrive on the Pony Express.

But doing nothing isn’t what this article is about. Instead, I wish to discuss another issue that’s been plaguing me: finding the balance between nothing and everything.

On occasion I’ll be bombarded with work. New tutorials must be written, apps are waiting to be reviewed, the lawn must be trimmed, and I really need to read that bit of poetry I’ve had open in my Safari tab for days. The last one is the most notable. Lately I’ve been keeping relatively short emails for days thinking I will eventually  get a chance to read them, but often I end up archiving them because there are hundreds of other things I need to do in that moment. I make everything a “do it later” task and put it in yet another list within Simplenote, hoping to one day conquer the goal.

In reality, I don’t get half of these things done because there are more important tasks out there. Is that a bad thing though? Am I missing out on an experience?

“Just because everyone jumps off the bridge doesn’t mean you need to follow”, my parents would remind me when I was a child. I’d respond, annoyingly for them, “But it could be a memorable experience.” There are a lot of experiences that can become good memories and if you think about it for a moment, there are billions of people doing different things than you are (maybe having experiences you’d enjoy). Does this mean you should focus on what you’re missing? Of course not.

A lot of people I know will spend their lives going to one extreme: doing only what they see fit for themselves. This means no adventure or excitement is present in their lives, but maybe they just don’t care. Other people I know will spend their days swimming on the opposite pole: trying to do everything at once. And that is your worst enemy. You will constantly be regretting your decisions to do one thing over another since, when you think about it, you missed yet another opportunity.

Is this a story of regret or missed opportunities? I don’t know anymore — at least not the way my brain is working at the moment. I just know that it’s easy to get stuck with lists of things to do and, out of sheer panic, run toward all of them. If you do accomplish all the goals, you may still be unhappy; not because you weren't there for something else, but rather that you did a shoddy job, focusing on too many things at once.