Do you ever just kinda sit there, paralyzed because you're thinking about all the problems you have to solve?
And you just need to start one of them, but because you can't solve them all really fast, your brain goes, "We can't do this," and you wind up scrolling on your phone for an hour.
Just me?
I touched on this back in October of 2024 but the sad news is, your life is never going to run out of problems. There are always going to be problems.
Our toddler has finally started putting himself to sleep at night and consistently sleeping through the night. Naturally, we’ve interpreted this modest increase in evening energy as an opportunity to become better people.
Being the Type A person that I am, I made a list.
The goal of the list is that if my wife and I could cross one thing off every night while the baby is going to bed, before we watch an episode of House, we'd feel like we did something productive for the day and made our house 1% better.
The problem with making a list is that I can add things to the list indefinitely, and it will never be finished! I could spend an entire day on Sunday trying to cross everything off the list and I would just find more things to put back on it afterwards.
Apparently, houses regenerate chores like a hydra.
You can't solve all of your problems in the next 30 minutes, no matter how hard you try to white-knuckle reality or how passionately your brain insists that a more competent person could have renovated the basement, answered every email and booked a dentist appointment before dinner.
A lot of times, we put time pressure on ourselves with these problems as well. We think if this doesn't get done in the next 30 minutes, I'm gonna fall so far behind and have to dig myself out of some productivity hole in the backyard.
Once again, the good news is you can't fall behind because there's always new stuff that comes after you solve this problem.
I would wager that less than 5% of the tasks that you have to do are truly time-sensitive.
Everything you have to do in your life can and will get done in some order, in some amount of time, before the deadline and before the ‘Grim Reaper of Productivity’ shows up with a clipboard.
What I'm about to tell you might sound like a waste of time.
Again…
We've determined that's okay. You’re not missing the brief window during which all your problems could have been permanently defeated.
Go for a walk.
Don’t bring headphones. Don’t listen to a podcast about optimizing your morning routine. Don’t turn the walk into zone-two cardio and track it across three different apps.
Just walk.
Listen to the birds. Look at some trees. Grab a coffee. Let your brain wander around without giving it a performance review.
You can’t solve all of your problems in the next 30 minutes.
But you can solve the problem of your brain trying to solve all of your problems at once.
Words I Wish I Wrote
"No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future."
Links & Learnings
Are you shopping for solutions at the problem store?
Patiently awaiting Oliver Burkeman’s new book about Aliveness: “The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life, I’m increasingly convinced, is something like aliveness.”
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PHOTW: The game I wish I had as a kid.
