you can do everything you want but not at the same time
part iv of 25 lessons by 25 🐥
Hi friends.
Sav here.
It’s been an exceedingly tough week, this time around.
Most of the time, I’ve got a solid draft running by Wednesday and spend the next few days editing but it’s only Wednesday as I type this and I’m starting pretty much from scratch — not what I’d usually prefer!
I don’t think I’ve gotten enough quality sleep. I’ve resorted to easy takeaway and leftovers. I’ve had to physically stand during work meetings so I don’t collapse off my chair and there’s been a lot of, let’s call it what it is, negative self-talk echoing across the top of the dome. Doing skincare, putting on an outfit, and hanging the laundry have been more troubling than usual and naturally, I’ve allowed my hobby of choice (writing, duh) fall to the wayside to make room for this new stress (which has occupied mental bandwidth, and that’s okay, but why in the hell am I letting it occupy my physical time?)
This is the real test of consistency, I reckon.
It’s easy to run your habits and hobbies when motivation is up, when the room if warm with sunshine and rainbows, when the bank account is full and the insurance is paid, when the water flows abundantly and everything falls into place like Tetris blocks — the same way it’s easier to love when each part plays perfectly, enraptured by a beautiful, well-practiced honeymoon phase.
It’s not easy to run your habits when motivation is slammed in the ground like a wet sock, when the world is chilly and freezing and welcome, when the bank account is bled dry with debts to pay and interest accrued, when there’s a humming undertone of neglect and unsupportiveness — the same way that the true test of love isn’t when everything is humming, but when it’s hard; resentment building into hate, defensiveness making a wicked turn to hostility.
I’m feeling a bit of that right now. Heck, perhaps that’s a point for my final part - that the most telling moment of whether we are true to ourselves is when we maintain our preferred habits, interests, hobbies and joys during times that the world feels so cataclysmically against us.
Let this post be a reminder to myself that I can do so.
And let this post be an example to the world that it’s true.
1. Sometimes, self-care is getting the thing done
While I don’t peruse this kind of content nowadays, I’ve stood at the unusual precipice of male-dominated hustle bro content that preaches discipline over motivation, extreme habit-building and productivity hacks, investment strategies to 10x wealth and the bustling Financial Independence Retire Early movement; while also subscribing the female-dominated lifestyle space which teaches unapologetic self-care and self-acceptance, a comfortable strategy session with journals, matcha and calming environments, and the heroic attestation that you do not need to conform to the world but the world must conform to you.
There is an endless laundry list of life advice coming from both spaces, most of which being similar but being told with differing tones, but one that I don’t hear from either space too often and that I’ve kind of made up on my own is a portmanteau of disciplines: Sometimes, self-care is getting the thing done.
I had discussed this in an old post about dealing with burnout which is, as you’ve seen in the intro, oddly relevant now!
As much as we want to perform at peak capacity, as much as we teach the importance of mental health and good sleep and allowing ideas to ruminate, as much as we declare that work-is-work and life-is-life and to decouple our career from the true joys of life — there are situations where the best course of action, no matter how exhausted or frustrated you are, is to kick the little shit across the line.
Send that email.
Submit the assignment.
Give the argument some closure — with a promise to readdress it tomorrow — before going to bed with festering animosity.
No amount of time management spreadsheets, cucumber-clad spa dates, or overhead bench presses will remedy the problem of getting your work done.
(The only thing that fixes it is, well, doing it.)
Have your judgement, train your judgement, trust your judgement — and that’s admittingly the most challenging part of it all, being able to differentiate what are must-haves and nice-to-haves and letting your voice dictate which is which. It’s a trump card, after all.
To be used not when other can’t wait, but YOU can’t wait.
2. You can do everything you want but not at the same time
I wish I could say that I came up with this but it’s probably up there as one of the most common bits of advice shared between my current generation.
And it’s all about this emerging conflict of doing everything you want to do / don’t spread yourself too thin.
There are many things I want in my life that one of these days, I’d like to collate into a bucket list. Off the top of my head, in this past year, I’ve wanted to:
Create a newsletter
Start a business/side hustle
Try every restaurant in Sydney
Write Google Reviews for them
Clean out my whole wardrobe
Establish a new capsule wardrobe
Learn the guitar
Learn the kalimba
Get into the property market
(Editing Sav here, now that I look at that list, I realise there’s a lot of important short-term actions here that aren’t quite what you’d put on a bucket list… I think I need to do an exercise separating the two.)
And now, while I still want many to varying degrees, I no longer strive for them — at least at this stage in life.
I’ve narrowed things down.
I write. I read. I build this newsletter. I try out restaurants. I put a bit of extra focus on doing good work.
This isn’t to say that I’ve given up on the rest of the above — they’ve just become less of a priority. And this isn’t to say I won’t do them today, because there’s always the next day, the next week, and the next year to do all of the rest. We fickle things have a tendency to overestimate what we can do in a day but underestimate what can change in a year.
Furthermore, I’m always under the question of whether my intentions are actually written by me, you know? Yes, it’s stereotypically a good idea to invest in the future, head to gym, travel the world, insert positive habit here — but just because it’s traditionally good advice, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good to me. How will each good point compete with other good points? Leading us into our next:
3. It is your story, your agency, your definition of success
There is only one person guaranteed to be with me for the rest of my life — and that’s myself.
Alas, it’s my responsibility to deliver some self-agency in defining the life I want for him, to define and act upon my own definitions of success.
This is an everlasting work-in-progress which I’ll probably spend the rest of my life deciphering, and this isn’t because I’m a terrible archeologist who takes one-step-forward-two-steps-back nor a flaky little branch who is swayed by those around me and constantly in question of my faith — but I think it’s just a feature, not bug, of the life we lead.
My definition of success has been pulled and shaped by my upbringing, environment, and certainly the people around me.
As a child, it was somebody obedient, compliant, not a troublemaker, got good grades and said the right things at the right time (which was usually nothing at all). That was probably the clearest I’ve ever been.
If you asked me today, I’d give you the templated answer that generations have been giving for years. A well-paying job. A comfortable nest egg. A wonderful property in a safe location. A beautiful wife with 1-2 kids. The means to eventually transition off full-time work to a lifestyle business that could run without me but I choose to participate in it because I find it meaningful, all so I could spend more time with those whom I care about.
But like I said before, how much of that is what I decided on my own? How much of it is inherited expectation from family, old and new? How much of it is spoken by the marketing guru trying to sell me an online course?
What if the truth lies somewhere else; a failed business idea, a co-working space in Bali, at a tiny house off the grid of Northern Territory, a cathedral in Barcelona, at a concert in Miami?
External factors may influence me — nothing wrong with that — but it is on me to establish my decision.
We live in an information age that is the fastest it’s ever been and the slowest it ever will be, which is why it’s become more apparent and important than ever to have both 1) the dedicated, lasering focus to the goal you pick and 2) the flexibility of admitting when you’re wrong, and pivoting when you [not other people] see fit.
It’s a bit of an acrobatic ask to be both stiff and flexible at the same time. Like I said, it’s something I think I’ll spend the rest of my life figuring out.
I am the protagonist and the pen. It is my story to write, live, and tell — and what are we if not the stories we tell ourselves?
4. You and your friends may grow at different rates (consider having both)
As a middle-to-upper income Chinese-Indonesian who moved to a Western country for education and proceeded to get an entry-level role in said country shortly after graduating, I’ve followed a fairly linear path so far. It’s all I know currently and the majority of my high school friends had done something similar — and it’s admittedly staggering how far this is from the norm.
Well, not that there is a norm, I think. It is redefined every generation.
Between the various colleagues I had met from work and friends made from university, I find myself living in such a narrow subset of experiences and that everyone leads such extraordinarily different lives that shape their mindset around career, relationships, money, fun, and of course: definitions of success.
It was easier when we were all in high school or university, where our shared antagonist was an upcoming assessment, lining up a graduate position, a rival school or that bastard who bullied people. It was okay not understand shit. It was okay to be dependent. It was okay to be lost and conceited and naive in the ways of the world.
Now, however, with a lot of us having entered this supposed real world, unsheltered by the overpriced daycare of tertiary education, I find that we’ve all progressed at different speeds and trajectories that I cannot help but feel alienated.
It’s pretty polarising, mind you, to find that some people are still making the same jokes they had from six years ago — well-satiated by awkward laughs and uncomfortable nods from the group who had moved on already.
It’s a common saying that you are the five people you surround yourself with and that you should surround yourself by those who inspire you.
While I still subscribe to that mentality and believe that actually stretches beyond people in your direct circle, I think there’s a lot of value in being aware of the universe set.
Just because a friendship does not provide as much supposed value to you as it did previously, doesn’t mean you should cut it off at the source (and yes, it’s a different story if said friendship is hurting you).
Have some awareness of those around you. Have some fealty for where you’ve come.
Never be some kind you forget to be clever. Never be so clever you forget to be kind.
Understand that people can progress differently, and while it’s never your responsibility to hold their hands through it — but it is a showing of maturity to exercise forgiveness and understanding.
5. Decisions become good or bad once they’re made
Probably one of the most prominent lessons I learnt from my last job had only become apparent in my four-week notice period.
It is the realisation that decisions are not inherently good or bad — but they become good or bad once they’re made, dictated almost exclusively by what you do after making said decision.
During my departure, there was massive internal debate on which was the right choice. I’d be closing one career pipeline and pursuing a different one, tossing away the comfort that I had carved for new challenges and opportunities, and I won’t lie — some of my old colleagues had given me a hard time for my decision, causing me to question whether I had really made the right play. It was a turbulent time for me.
To build some extreme scenarios:
Going down a pipeline of drug addiction is often a decidedly awful decision, but if it’s through that you rebound from the darkest stages of your life, develop a newfound joy for entrepreneurship and charitable work, find the love of your life and work with them to create an organisation that prevents/helps others from falling down the path — wouldn’t that be a net positive outcome?
Travelling overseas for increased income and international work experienced is often heralded as an incredible choice, but if it results in tenacious conflict between you and your family, detachment from your culture and hometown, getting involved with the wrong people and finding yourself enraptured by loneliness in a beautiful apartment — was it really the right choice?
I’ll never know. They’ll never know. Nobody would ever know until the decision is made.
And with that, it’s never the decision, but what happens afterwards.
It’s like a Schrodinger’s Cat scenario of you can only open the box to find out what it is but until then; your life exists in a primordial, uncertain, superpositioned state where you are not quite alive but not quite dead, at the same time.
And I like this because it puts a lot less gravity on the decisions we make today.
It changes the question from “Is this right or wrong?” to “Do I want to open this box?”
Give your best to the universe and let the universe handle the rest.
Like a game of Poker, you don’t know what cards are on the table nor do you know each of your rivals hold — all you have are the two cards you’ve been dealt, and those two cards are all you need to take into your decision-making.
And again, just like Poker, if you lose this round — there will always be another hand.
(And this of all points is oddly relevant to the stress I touched on in my introduction. I’m at the crossroads of a decision I’ve been wickedly afraid to make and carry out. Neither is the right choice. Neither is the wrong choice. All I can do is work with what’s in my heart.)
substacks i’ve enjoyed recently:
25 things i've learned in my 25 years - by
📰I broke up with the best man I’ve ever known because I deserve more. by
🪞An Ugly New Marketing Strategy Is Driving Me Nuts (and You Too) - by
💢If you liked this post, this is actually part four! Here are the links to part one, two and three. 🎂
Thank you so much for including me ❤️