Have you ever tried to do one more thing before you had to be somewhere?
What happened? You were late, right?
But for some reason we don’t think this is a big deal. For some reason we think we can do it all. For some reason we are blind to the trade offs.
I can’t tell you the number of times I try to send one more email or text, make a phone call, or place an order from Amazon before I head out the door.
But if I only have ten minutes before I need to be somewhere and it’s going to take ten minutes to get there, I’m going to be late.
In other words, if I say “yes” to one more thing at home, then I say “no” to arriving on time. But if I want to say “yes” to arriving on time, then I need to say “no” to one more thing. Duh, right?
We have all bought into the illusion that we can have it all and do it all.
We say yes to more and more things thinking we have the time and energy to handle it all. How’s that going? For real, how’s your family, your connection with God, your soul?
If you feel depleted, exhausted, or overwhelmed it’s time to pause and ask the question. What’s most important?
In 2016 I found myself hitting rock bottom. I kept saying yes to more and more things until there was nothing left. I had these scary moments where I felt like I was going to faint or go crazy. I had no motivation and my productivity slowed to
When we try to have it all and do it all, we find ourselves making trade-offs that we would have never made otherwise. Often our families and souls suffer the most. It’s how to know we have lost sight of what’s most important.
Don’t believe me? When is the last time you put work over family? When is the last time a phone call or text took priority over relationships right in front of you? When is the last time your schedule disrupted time with God?
I get it. We need to work hard and provide for our families. But I don’t want to lose sight of what’s most important.
“When we try to do it all and have it all, we find ourselves making trade-offs at the margins that we would never take on as our intentional strategy. When we don’t purposefully and deliberately choose where to focus our energies and time, other people—our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, and even our families—will choose for us, and before long we’ll have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important. We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives.”
Greg McKeown
If I could go back to my
We cannot have it all and we cannot do it all
Trade-offs are real in our personal, family, school, work, and spiritual lives. Until we accept this reality, we will continue to live by default rather than by design.
Default mode depletes the soul and complicates life. Default mode is a life without intentionality and constantly giving in to our selfish desires. Default mode is exhausting.
When we live by default rather than by design we can’t focus on what really matters in life.
I love how Ephesians 1:11-12 MSG talks about our design.
“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
There is purpose to life. We’ve been created and designed for glorious living. So the question we must pause and ask ourselves is “what really matters?”
Most of us would say things like our faith or our family. But the reality is often our faith and families get pushed aside or swallowed up in the busyness of life.
Trade-offs are happening left and right and we don’t realize it. Trade-offs create hidden complications which add to our stress, worry, and frustration.
If you haven’t noticed, life has become more and more complicated in the last ten years. The reason
What is even more alarming is the opinions about those choices.
“Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing purpose he. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”
Greg Mckeown
Think about the simple decision of where to in to eat dinner. Ten years ago families would just ask each other what they wanted to eat—then go eat there. But now, we are filtering this decision through every social media post and online crowd-sourced review. One time it took thirty minutes to decide where to eat based on Yelp reviews. Ugh.
No wonder we have decision fatigue! If the simple decisions have become complicated, what does that suggest for the more complicated decisions?
Bottom line, if we are making trade-offs we don’t want to make, it’s a clear sign that we have lost sight of what’s most important.
Why not make a change?
Challenge: Recognize the trade-offs. We cannot have it all and do it all. Decide what’s We’ve and make an intentional decision.
Question
Resources
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
- Free eCourse – 5 Ways To Simply Your Busy Schedule