“What’s important is doing what I should do” This sentence keeps on popping up in my conversations with others and my thoughts often theses days. It could be because of renewed focus on long-term goals for my life and purposes I want to practice and reach. But the crucial point here is that I find myself saying this, almost always, when I’ve reviewed my activities and realize that despite planning otherwise, I’ve ended up spending my time doing “what I want” instead of “what I should do”.
Now, Its important to stay practical and strategic when approaches these ideas and concepts of self-management and self-development. So I’ll try my best to avoid preaching. If it does feel that way at some point, just focus on whatever is useful and helpful for you.
It seems to me that the things I want to do fall into two categories, they are either needs or urges. Needs are things like food or sleep and are sometimes necessary. If I feel sleepy because I haven’t slept much or feel hungry because I haven’t eaten yet, it’s natural to sleep and eat. In these moments, the action falls into both groups of what I want and what I should do. But actions that are exclusively what I want to do and not what I should do are the problem. You can ask yourself right now, go ahead and take a minute, “what do I want to do throughout my day that isn’t what I should do?” The answers are clear, we can make a list.
“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
Steven Pressfield
All these things are distractions, all unnecessary to live a meaningful life. Why? because if they serve a purpose or a goal, they end up being something you should do. Maybe an act you want to do now but should do later, but still something you’ll eventually do (or should do). What are the most typical examples from my own experience? going on social media, simply to scroll and “look around”, or watching YouTube videos back to back on topics that don’t inform or even relate to activities in your life.
Procrastination plays a big role, laziness and mostly resistance. As Steven Pressfield puts it in his book the War of Art, resistance is the natural force that responds to any activity that “rejects immediate gratification in favour of long-term growth, health, or integrity.” We often want to do what’s comfortable in the moment. A challenge that also comes up is the rationalization that comes with all these thoughts. For some of us, there seems to always be a good reason to not do what we should. the best of us in this aspect would win olympic medals in rationalization if it were a thing! But we have to be aware of this and ask ourselves “am I convincing myself to not do what I know deep down to be the task I should perform?” Too often is the answer “yes”.
Now, it’s not all hopeless! The first step is to acknowledge that we do some things, only because we want to, not because we should. The second step is to objectively look at the things we have done in the past day or week. The third step is to ask, for every activity, if it truly was something we should have done. This step is the most complex one and worth going into the details of it.
Step three is the moment when we get defensive and blame others. It’s when we rationalize why what we did was fine, it was good. And if we push ourselves, we might admit that it was something we shouldn’t have done but that ultimately it is fine because we aren’t always doing those things. Or all of those actions could fall into a narrative, a story, we tell ourselves about how we are in a period in which it is okay to not do what we should. Be honest with yourself. For your own sake, do what is best for you. Trust that that with the aim to better yourself and your way of life, you’ll get closer to reaching the goals that matter to you. What kind of life is worth living? One in which you do the things that give meaning and purpose and fulfillment or one where, looking back, you feel was time wasted, with no results to have for yourself.
“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”
Steven Pressfield
Suggestion: Tell yourself, maybe even out loud: “It’s totally fine if I have made mistakes or have wasted my limited time and energy doing things I shouldn’t have. All I need to do right now is to start to try to do better.” That’s it! Just do what is in your control, in the best way you know, in the present moment.
See, even if we look back and see that we did not end up doing things that mattered or that, today, we have no results of our work, It is okay if we see that in all those moments, we were doing what was in our control, in the best way we knew. Everything else is outside of our control, expect what isn’t.
Orange Stoic 