Periodically I’m asked, “how do you do it all?” I find this a little baffling, to be honest, because I don’t really have it all together as much as people seem to perceive me to!  But there are two basic answers I can provide to this question, and one of them — as counterintuitive as it sounds — is “don’t try.”

Wait…what?!

Don’t waste time and effort doing what you don’t need to do.

“If you do the right things adequately, that’s much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully.”
-Randy Pausch

This is one of my favorite quotes.  (Although, to be fair, I have a lot of favorite quotes.)  It’s an excellent summary of the principle I’m trying to emphasize here.  So is this one:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
-Anonymous

And even as I was thinking through this post, I heard the following in a speech by Denzel Washington:

“Just because you’re doing a lot more doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot more done.  Don’t confuse movement with progress.”

All of these are varying ways of saying the same thing: it’s not beneficial to spend time and Energy on things you shouldn’t be doing.  If you’re trying to “do it all,” you’re already setting yourself up to fail, because nobody can do it all.  If you try to do everything, some important things will inevitably fall by the wayside.

Do what matters.

What you really want is to do what matters.  Figure out what ought to be done, and what ought to be done by you, and focus your energy and attention on those things.

Because you’re attempting fewer things, you can give each one more focus and attention.  And because they really matter, when you’ve done them, you’ll feel better about what you’ve accomplished than if you’re just trying to do “all the things,” willy-nilly.

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