At the end of each year, I’ll start to feel a little bit anxious. It’s been a thing for a while now. I start to think about the future and be excited but I’ll simultaneously be worried that I didn’t make the most of the previous year. To counteract that feeling, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on the ways in which I grew in 2022. So I looked back over some of my favorite books, gave some podcasts another listen, and thought about some of my favorite conversations and moments from the past year. As I listened to a podcast by Chris Williamson, I came across an idea that I loved: Choose in advance what you will suck at. 

This is a particularly hard idea to implement for myself because I put such an emphasis on balance in my life. A few days without great sleep call for the prioritization of getting into bed early the next day. After a few days of not working out, a trip to the gym or a walk becomes essential. A day or two of no interesting social interactions means I must hit up a friend and ask to catch up. Conversely, a whole day of social interactions means I’ll politely let people know I’m putting in my noise-cancelling earphones that double as a physical Do-Not-Disturb sign. 

Balance in life is beautiful. At least to me it is. When my various physical, social, and emotional needs are met, I feel happiest, as if I am at my best. There is a drawback to it, though. I think in order to achieve something great, we must be temporarily unbalanced. Perhaps we become a monk, only rarely responding to friends’ messages as we focus on our work. Perhaps we prioritize our physical health so much that we do not do anything that would stand in the way of achieving our next PR. I think if we look at people who achieve great feats, we see examples of this. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods did not lead balanced lives in their peak. They were practicing and thinking about competing all the time. Steve Jobs was no different; he would call his employees up at 3am and ask them their opinion on an idea for a product. Elon Musk claims that he sometimes works up to 120 hours a week, which is approximately 71% of the week (a 40-hour work week, for context, is approx. 23%). “Go to sleep, I wake up, work, go to sleep, work, do that seven days a week,” Musk once said. 

So people who achieve great feats are willing to throw their life out of balance. Does that mean we should too? I think so, with the caveat that it’s only for a short-ish time. Maybe we don’t work a crazy amount of hours for 6 months, but we do for a few weeks. Maybe we don’t put off social engagements or the gym for an entire year, but maybe we do for a month. We may not look our best or feel our best but we undertake such actions because some tasks demand an uncomfortable sacrifice. 

For the rest of the month, I have some big goals I would like to accomplish. But I know I can’t do them if I try to stay in balance. Therefore, I know I’m going to be forced to give some things up for my gain in the long run. And because this isn’t how I’m wired (I love having balance), I’m choosing in advance what I’ll suck at: I probably won’t be able to hang out with my friends as much. I probably won’t have as much time for leisure reading or listening to podcasts. This will inevitably lead to FOMO as I see everyone’s fun night out or wonder when the last time is I read something to genuinely enjoy it. But this is the price, in advance, that I’ve chosen to pay. It makes dealing with it a little bit easier. I think a lot of people get tripped up when trying to change their habits after a few days when they don’t feel particularly great. The novelty of the new habit and some of its instant rewards fade and we are left face-to-face with the uncomfortable feeling that long-term progress requires. But to power through that we must accept that this is the price we must pay for a while and hope it’ll be worth it in the end.