The conventional answer, the answer you’ll find in most bookstores and at most seminars is some variation of “do more with less,” “practice time management,” or as Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “sleep faster.”El-Erian stated in his dad-of-the-year Facebook article that he spent years justifying missing his daughter’s birthdays to himself — he was busy, work was too demanding, his travel schedule was insane.This is the typical work/life balance, woe-is-me complaint we always hear: “I have all of these things I want to do and not enough time.”But what if the answer isn’t to do more?What if the answer is to want less?What if the solution is simply accepting our bounded potential, our unfortunate tendency as humans to inhabit only one place in space and time. What if we recognize our life’s inevitable limitations and then prioritize what we care about based on those limitations?What if it’s as simple as stating, “This is what I choose to value more than everything else,” and then living with it?
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When we attempt to do everything, to fill up life’s checklist, to “have it all,” we’re essentially attempting to live a valueless life, a life where everything is equally gained and nothing lost. When everything is necessary and desired equally, then nothing is necessary or desired at all.
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