Figuring out what's really important
When I reflect back on my life so far, I realised that I spent a good amount of my time and energy in pursuits that were not important.
This was mainly because I thought it to be important at that point in time.
There are additional details that need to be laid out on this topic.
For example, when I talk about something being important, the question is why is it important?
It's mostly because investing time and effort in it helps me get closer to a goal I've set.
Therefore, what's important to each person really depends on that those goals are.
I think that we end up focusing on things that we think are important (but in actual fact, aren't) because a) we think that it would get us closer to our goals, or b) those goals we set are actually what we really want.
Coming back to myself, I think I was misguided in both aspects.
Now that I'm older, I am trying to be a lot more decisive with what I think is important by asking myself two questions: 1) what is fundamentally dear to me, and 2) what are the 'needle-movers' that can help my achieve/maintain (1)?
With regards to the first question, I like to do a thought experiment, which might be a tad bit morbid to some. I ask myself: what would I really care about if I had a month left to live?
The reason why I ask nyself this question is because it's easy to list of many things if I had a the luxury of time.
Placing myself in a position where I have to decide what to prioritise in an extremely short amount of time, without to possibility of going back to what I excluded, helps to put things into perspective.
Another benefit of this approach is that it is not dependent on my circumstance. I could be 30, 40, 50, or even 90 years old, but given a month to live, if I were to be brutally honest with myself, the answers should not drasically change much.
The answer varies from individual to individual. It could be family, accomplishment, recognition, self-actualisation, etc.
Regardless of what it is, that narrow set of things we define as important becomes our north star in which all other decisions and principles are based on.
The next important question is then: how do we decide what to do that most effectively moves us closer in the direction of our north star.
There are three main principles which I keep in mind when deciding what to do
The first is acknowledging that a small percentage of all pursuits lead to an outsized impact or output.
Many would recognise this as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. I hesitate to label it as such because the numbers are arbitrary, but the principle applies.
What this means in practice is that we should be saying 'no' to more pursuits that we normally like to.
We live in a world of limited resources (time, energy, money, etc). It comes down to the allocation of that we have in the most effective of manners.
If we say 'yes' to many things, we will inadvertently be allocating resources to pursuits the are less impactful.
Worse, we would have less resources to allocate to the actual needle-movers when we come across them.
Thus, in order to have the resources prepared to execute on the the needle-movers, we need to be we need to be radically upfront with what we say 'no' to.
The second is to try to reduce dependencies.
What this means is that I try to reduce the number of external factors that have a significant impact what is important to me.
For example, I value quality time with my family very much. As such, I try to block out time for them
Work exigencies may crop up once in a while, which would require me to re-allocate time for family to work instead.
In this example, I would try to find ways to minimise the extent in which work impacts my time with family.
Following that train of thought, is any type of work (regardless of how important or urgent it is), really more important than family (for someone that prioritises relationships with family)?
All in all, I try to reduce the impact of unimportant things on the important things.
The third is that I to build up an environment which is conducive for me to work on what's important.
I think that willpower and discipline require huge amounts of cognitive load.
In other words, its challenging to be constantly directing resources into ensuring that we are focused on the most important things to us.
To reduce the congnitive load, I try to build up well-designed processes, protocols, systems around my life that I can follow.
This serves two purposes.
The first is that it remdinds me of what I should be focusing/working on. Its already so difficult to do something right, let alone having to first decide the right thing to do. Building these protocols out helps alleviate the load of the latter.
The second is that it reduces to friction of some tasks which might be difficult or less paletable. Its no surprise that some things that are important might not necessarily be urgent or pleasant to work on (like exercise). I can design the systems to be less painful, or even enjoyable.