Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar:
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Unknown:
So many [X], so little time
Every morning at work we send out an email titled "[date] [group name] Priorities" that encompasses what happened over the past 12 hours and what's going to happen during the next 12. Each section is roughly ordered by level of importance, and when we don't assign specific people to actions they still know what to work—just start from the top and work down. Some items are worked immediately following the meeting, while others remain on the email for weeks on end for visibility, eventually getting addressed when convenient or possible. No one expects everything on the daily list to get done in those 12 hours that always seem to pass by much quicker than other 12-hour periods. Instead, we expect technicians to work hard and accomplish what they can. Obstacles and unforeseen circumstances (in the form of more-than-expected work per item or additional, high-priority items) are expected throughout the day. I also have personal priorities that I keep track of in a text document, but the execution is similar: I underestimate difficulty and or length, other fires pop up and require direct attention, or I run out of time and push it off to another day.
Every Saturday I review my past week and plan the following week down to day-level resolution. I know what type of training session I'm doing on Tuesday, which chores and errands I'm running on Wednesday, and what friends I'm hanging out with on Friday. Included in the list are daily to-dos, like reading books, reviewing my Anki deck, and some basic exercises that are unrelated to my main training session.
Every 1 January I review my past year and decide my goals for the following year. Every year I put down too many—some conflicting and others not—after telling myself this is the year I do this or that, and without fail I end up crossing off a handful because my priorities change and I can't support pursuing X without sacrificing the quality or success of Y. (Despite years of the same behavior, I will probably continue doing this. When did ambition ever hurt me?)
Personal priorities are limited by time, energy, funding, or a combination thereof.
Everyone wants to be good at their job, get eight hours of sleep, be fit, travel, retire early, have a lot of friends, eat and cook good food and drink good drink, be well-read and well-watched, learn a second language, and so on and so forth. But no one can do this for those three limiting factors mentioned above:
Only so much can be done to try to improve (read: lessen) the impact of the factors, thus maintaining the same number of priorities. Time can be optimized, activities can be delegated to others (paid or unpaid), or the task can be done faster. Energy can be improved by getting adequate sleep, eating sufficiently and correctly, and regularly exercising. Funding can be increased by minimizing or eliminating excess spending or increasing disposable income.
But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Delegation often requires funding; faster performance requires energy; adequate sleep requires time; eating requires time for preparation, money for the materials, and the mental energy for discipline; exercise requires time on task; saving money requires mental energy from self-discipline; increasing income requires energy for better performance or searching for better positions.
Something has to give and something always does and always will. Exceptions are few and far in between. This give manifests itself in qualitative and quantitative ways. If maintaining all priorities, the quality of results from each task will not be nearly as high as if fewer priorities were focused on. Quality requires time and effort, both of which improve quality logarithmically, and both of which are in short supply when a plethora of priorities are being worked. If maintaining quality across top priorities, the least important tasks must be culled or deferred to a more opportune time.
A quality-focus is arguably superior for a few reasons, two practical and one personal. First, focusing on a single task increases momentum and motivation by extension. Second, task durations become less additive as numbers increase. If tasks A, B, C, and D take one, two, four, and eight hours by themselves, respectively, it will take at least 15 hours to complete all four. But if task C is interrupted to work on task A, then it takes some time to re-familiarize with the original task. This becomes especially problematic as task complexity and pause duration (the time between stopping and restarting a task) increases. Third, there's something aesthetic and principled about having high quality standards and meeting them. It shows care and diligence and pride. No one noteworthy has looked at poor workmanship and been satisfied with it.
It's difficult to come to terms with the fact that not everything can be achieved without sacrifice, but it's this understanding that allows expectations to be tempered, disappointments to be avoided, and plans to be determined and implemented.
Being freed from the confines of priority jail is refreshing. Tasks can be focused on with as much vigor as desired, a zero-sum game that is only beneficial, at least for those focused on quality. Decrease the number of priorities and keep crankin' the volume up.
How to go about exercising this newfound freedom?
The Eisenhower Matrix is a 2x2 grid that helps decide where a task should be prioritized based on its urgency and importance:
Both urgency and importance are non-binary and fall on a spectrum—some things are absolutely urgent and/or important, just less so than others. This is the method I use of prioritizing tasks in my personal and professional life. The level of urgency and importance is rarely quantifiable, but they should be known nonetheless.
I'll repeat: it's difficult to come to terms with the fact that not everything can be achieved without sacrifice, but it's this understanding that allows expectations to be tempered, disappointments to be avoided, and plans to be determined and implemented.
There is so much I want to experience and achieve in life that is contradicted by other goals or limited by the aforementioned factors: I want to watch all the classic movies; I want to do handstands and have strong legs while still being able to cycle for hundreds of miles; I want to read every book on my ever-growing to-read list; I want to travel to exotic countries and explore the backstreets and forgotten towns and taste the ethnic food; I want to build physical and digital work that lasts forever and is used by many; I want to have a lasting impact in my work group; I want to build a home out of a house; I want to develop useful and useless skills alike; I want to say I did this and say I accomplished that; I want it all.
But not all of that is possible, and the sooner I come to terms with that the better, because then I can start focusing on achieving the things that really matter, the things that I want to say I did on my death bed, the things I would regret not doing.
Note the exclusive use of the word "want". There are no "need"s here, no requirements. Everything can be traded for something else with no tangible effect other than the overwhelming feeling of regret felt at the end after realizing it's too late to prioritize differently.
Prioritize wisely and be ready to accept the outcome, whatever it may be.