The importance of accepting: I can't do everything
It is a counterintuitive idea that one of the keys to getting things done is to realise that you can’t do everything.
In his book, Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman convincingly argues that many of the unhealthy obsessions we have with speed, busyness and – yes – productivity come down to our being unable or unwilling to accept that we will one day die.
That we will one day die, means that one day, we will stop living and, I’ve got a sad truth for you: unfortunately, on the day you die, you won’t have done everything. There will be tasks unfinished, conversations not had, countries not visited, businesses not started, careers not chosen, roads not travelled.
And so the question arises: while I’m here, what will I do with this one precious life?
The assumption that we can do everything is often unconscious. And it is almost always damaging.
In the last few weeks I have watched, somewhat helpless, as two people I know have wrestled with this assumption. Incredible busyness disrupting their lives, while they professed the stress of it.
It’s important to say that the pressure on them is real: there are many, many important things to be done in both their lives. Sometimes there really is a time in our lives where we just have to knuckle down and do, do, do.
But it’s interesting that for these two people, as for so many of us, the thing that gets sacrificed is… them. The time they might have spent on or with themselves. The slowing down time.
With Burkeman’s ideas in mind, it’s hard not to see this as the time they might have had to look at their situation, realise they can’t do everything and, in doing that, face their own mortality. And so it is advantageous – if you want to pretend you will never die – to never slow down.
Robert Holden laughs about the speed at which we obsess about speed in our society of Destination Addiction. In his work, he sometimes refers to ‘involuntary stops’ – times when the universe forces us to slow down enough to look at life and see it anew. Redundancies, break-ups, illness for ourselves and our loved ones, death close to us. Always, I see as I write this now, signs that we can’t do everything, that we are mortal, that there will be roads we don’t travel.
When I spoke to the developmental psychologist Jennifer Garvey Berger on The Coach’s Journey Podcast, she talked about how sometimes we really grow when something in our worldview breaks and we can't hold onto that worldview any more. This is what happens in the involuntary stop. We see something - the future I imagined with this person will never come to be - that forces us to see the world anew. There is a road I won't travel. I am mortal. And with that view, the whole world looks different.
This greater perspective shows us again, the key question: while I’m here, what will I do with this one precious life?
And so this reminder, that I can’t do everything, is often a reminder of our choice. Of our ability to be the protagonist in our life. That just as we can choose to see the world differently, we can also choose to say No to the meeting that went in our diary, that gets in the way of something that is more important.
That we can’t do everything is not just important for productivity, though. It is fundamental for meaning.
Meaning is, at least in part, relative. Only by seeing that we have choice, that we can’t do everything, do our choices matter. By choosing we come to realise what is most important to us. We come to realise that some things matter.
That, if I got to the end of my life, I would have regrets in certain circumstances and not in others. That I would be more sad about some outcomes than others. That there are some moments that warrant repeating.
All of this comes from realising that, unfortunately, we can’t do everything.
Or, maybe, fortunately.
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Join me in December for an interactive workshop on applying ideas like the one in this article: How to Be More Productive (and why time management won’t help you)
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Read the archive of the 12-minute blog here.