I can only do so much
Realizing and coming to terms with personal capacity
College
Aged 19 I lived off campus with friends in a lovely terrace house. I was captain of the college rugby team, managing the college bar, and on academic probation.
I rarely made classes, but went above and beyond to make sure the rugby team thrived. I would skip formative assignments, but would pick up extra shifts on the bar in a heartbeat. I was at once a success and failure.
It was the year Gray College won the prestigious Floodlit trophy, the year the most stock was unaccounted for during Gray day (a source of enormous personal pride), and the year I calmly drank a bottle of whisky by myself while playing Pro-Evo when I should have been doing a C++ assignment.
I remember vividly writing a long and earnestly sincere end-of-year review of a Mathematics In Many Variables course explaining that while I loved Durham and the many opportunities collegiate life presented, I simply did not have time to dedicate to my studies. That feeling of helplessness haunted my 20s. I had recurring nightmares about failing to prepare for exams. The feeling wasn’t so much a dread of the failure itself, but the perceived dread of letting others down. I knew I wasn’t applying myself, but I had nothing left to give.
Aged 19 my two priorities were playing rugby and running the college bar. School didn’t make the cut. Madeline was blissfully unaware of how thinly I was spread, having returned to California to complete her final undergraduate year.
San Francisco
Somehow I graduated and relocated to San Francisco to be with Madeline and begin my second shot at studies at SF State. I would often comment about how much easier school was without the distraction of a social life. Things were going so well and seemed so manageable that I joined a rugby team. It immediately put pressure on Madeline and me— it seemed doable, plenty of my friends managed a relationship, a job and rugby. But on nights with training or weekends with games, it always felt like I was choosing rugby over Madeline.
Fortune struck when I received a concussion while playing in a game on Treasure Island. The game ended, and I started asking around when it was scheduled to kickoff. Flashbacks to my previous concussion in Durham accompanied memory loss. Madeline told me firmly that I’d played my last game, and I felt a creeping relief that I wouldn’t have to play any more. We were engaged a few months later.
Aged 22 my two priorities were graduate school and building a relationship with Madeline. Rugby was a brief distraction which strained both.
Suburbia
We got married, moved to the south bay and had a kid. Shortly after, I transitioned from being a backend to a frontend engineer, and moved from a large company to join a team of 4. I worked hard to prove myself and bridge the gap in my knowledge and experience. And I tried hard to get off on the right foot with being a new dad.
I was doing everything I could to fulfill my public facing commitments. But the most important relationship in my life was being neglected.
At 26 my priorities were work and being a father. Once I was able to pull back from work, I found myself able to refocus on my relationship with Madeline.
My two priority rule
These “highlights” are just a sample of the evidence strewn throughout my 20s of times when I’ve struggled because I’ve had too much going on. I’m not talking multi-tasking or too busy of a social calendar. These aren’t things little life hacks will solve. I’m proud of operating an efficient and focussed day-to-day life.
I’m talking about too many major commitments — those are harder to manage. Recently I’ve distilled it down to the realization that I can accommodate at most two major commitments in my life at any one time. Any more, and fractures begin to form.
I internalize a lot of the struggle when I’m overloaded, but ultimately it spills out and isn’t very pleasant. When I was younger, I was the one who stood to lose the most from this discomfort — the bottle of whiskey, the failure to study to a level I was proud of. Now though, it’s the people around me who are impacted by my choices.
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years” [1]
This realization is freeing me to recognizing when I’m spread too thin and gives a name to the elephant in the room when Madeline needs to point out when I’m stretched or neglectful.
Aged 32 my priorities are my family and work. With 3 kids and a wife, that’s probably enough on its own, but I don’t want to write an article about self awareness and then admit that I’m currently in violation of my own rules.
After pressing publish on this, I drove home and realized the reason this has been weighing on me is how it sets up the future. It’s all well and good explaining away challenges in the past, but as a constraint applying to the future it’s a little harder to swallow.
I know this likely means that short of retiring early, I won’t be able to coach my kid’s soccer teams. And that I won’t be committing to any marathon training any time soon. It’s not that I couldn’t, but that I shouldn’t. For my own sake, and for the sake of those around me.
[1] A reference within a reference: Greg McKeown within a page by James Clear: http://jamesclear.com/multitasking-myth ← this is focussed, as a lot of books are, on decluttering the day to day — multi-tasking type stuff. I’ve rather unwittingly stumbled upon a similar approach for my macro life.
