Too much stuff and not enough time

It’s time to run out and buy a lottery ticket because today is my lucky day! Amazon just fixed a $50 mistake (of theirs) with only an 11 minute phone call. This was unprecedentedly fast, a complete record. Amazon is usually horrible to work with. I brace myself for an hour of frustration if I decide it’s a big enough problem to actually call them. Of course I’m not sure it’s actually fixed. I’ll know after I see the $50, right?

This morning’s Amazon story leads me to today’s topic: too much stuff, and not enough time (and how we got here). This is a continuation of a theme I mentioned in another post a couple of weeks ago.

Recently, I read a NYT Bestseller called Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman (2021). I don’t recommend you rush out and buy it. It’s a bit repetitive. Although I’ve read tons of these kinds of books over the last 25 years, so if you don’t generally read self-help books, you might not find it as repetitive as I did.

His thesis is, 1) Life is ridiculously short, but we think of it as never ending, leading us to imagine we can and should do more than we can actually do in life, and 2) We have a near infinite number of great, useful, reasonable, helpful things we could do with our (very limited) time, thousands of which are important enough to seem necessary.

This author also spends a fair amount of time criticizing the implicit “you can do it all!” message of productivity books, which he sees as delusionally optimistic and making us all miserable. He points out that we are missing life if we are continually focused on the future. This is true, but I do appreciate good time management tips and tricks, because if I am going to do a thing, I might as well do it efficiently.

But we cannot solve time management issues with efficiency, any more than we can solve budget issues by only shopping discount sales. To live well, we must choose to do (and buy) only a few things. And whatever we choose is never going to seem like it’s the very best of all the options. This is because life ultimately boils down to the mundane moments when we are simply talking to a neighbor or searching the internet for a good pecan pie recipe (that’s my own example, not the author’s, and I will hopefully tell you more about that pie in another post).

Life is full of great opportunities, but to function well, we need to whittle it down to a just a few things – leaving many, many valuable, worthwhile, pressing options undone.

When people talk about “learning to say no,” we usually imagine being determined to cut negative choices out of our life. For example, to resist being bullied into sitting on a non-profit board that doesn’t interest you, or resist spending time on a work project that isn’t the direction you want to take your career. But it’s actually about saying “no” to tons of very valuable, appealing, meaningful opportunities, in order to leave room for a small number of regular ol’ stuff that we’ve chosen to do.

I volunteer at the botanical garden two hours a week on Monday mornings. Is this the highest possible use of that two hours? Probably not. But it’s what I do. And I deliberately don’t do much else for 2 more hours afterwards because I find it to be too much to do another activity in the same morning. I figured this out through trial and error!

I’m having a similar conversation with Guen and Callan, who are working on doing a better job with their budget. There are inevitably more useful, valuable, seemingly-necessary things to do with their money than they have money. And this is the case for all of us in our current culture, regardless of how wealthy we are. There’s always more amazing and important things to do with one’s money.

Over 20 years ago, when I was first learning to be a life coach, I was taught that yes-or-no decisions aren’t really choices. I didn’t understand it at the time, although I grasped that more options could potentially increase the likelihood of a better outcome.

The key here is, it’s not a matter of recognizing whether a potential purchase is good or bad and making a yes-or-no decision about a particular purchase. There are too many good options out there to simply use good-bad or yes-no as a decision criteria. It doesn’t narrow the options down enough.

Pretty much all the stuff that Guen (or I) want to buy is good and useful stuff. So we can’t decide by using the question of, “Is it worth it, yes or no?” Instead, it’s a prioritization exercise. What we have to do is ask, “Is it a very top priority?” In order to ask that question, we need to have some idea of what our other options might be, for comparison.

What are our other options? Nothing short of thousands and thousands of other things! For example, check out this list that hits my inbox every week, https://thisistucson.com/todo/things-to-do-tucson/article_7eb41308-b105-11ef-b0c1-23abc06dbcba.html

100 things to do just in my mid-sized city, and it doesn’t even include the music events I like! The opportunities are near-endless.

So how do we choose? I suggest keeping a list of things that have caught your attention, whether it is activities you’d like to do or things you’d like to buy. Note how much each of those options would cost in time and money. Think about what you and others are likely get out of each of them and what your priorities are. Sit with the list for awhile. See which things slowly percolate to the top.

Amazon has a handy “save for later” option to help save purchase ideas, which can use as a list of potential purchase, in order to prioritize between all of them. Likewise, I’ll put potential events that I’m considering on a separate calendar so I can still see them and use them as part of my decision making, without yet committing to them. If I signed up for everything that sounded good, or bought everything that seemed necessary – you know what would happen. Too much stuff and not enough time!

I am dedicating this month to getting rid of stuff. I actually started in November, but it’s a difficult, time-consuming process. I also want to refrain from buying so many good things in the future. Realizing that it is good things – but too many of them – that I’m buying, is key for me. It’s not that I’m buying bad things! I like the things I buy. But I have too many. So it’s not sufficient to simply quit buying bad things. I also need to quit buying most of the good things!

I’m also going to do fewer activities. I have a set of criteria (values) I designed for myself to help guide my activity decisions. Your values would be different, but I’m sure we would overlap in some areas. Here are mine (not in any order):

  • Helpful to others
  • Friends
  • Family
  • Outdoors
  • Active/exercise
  • Learning
  • Music/dance
  • Art
  • Science
  • Local community/nearby

Not everything I put into my calendar is going to check all the boxes. But some things will check several boxes at once. I can even play a little game to see which activities check the highest number of boxes. For example, going to see a local live band performing on an outdoor plaza where there’s dancing, checks four values: “Outdoors”, “Active/exercise”, “Music/dance”, and “Local community”. And if I can find someone who wants to go with me, even better, that will also check off “Friends” for a total of 5 categories and a great evening!

If I discover an activity that seems compelling but doesn’t check any boxes, then I’ve probably left some important values off my list, and it might be useful to rethink the list. For example, for some things, I like regular activities better than occasional or one-off activities. There’s a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, I like some structure in my week.

For another thing, I’m working on making new local friends, and it’s definitely easier to make friends if you’re going to repeat events and not one-offs. At least for me! I’m not friendly enough to meet people and remember their names and get their phone numbers and schedule something to do together – if I’ve only met them once! Most of my friends are other volunteers on my team at the botanical garden, because that’s where I see the same few people over and over for a year now. It takes me awhile! So maybe I should add “repeating” to my list of values for potential uses of my time.

I wonder if I should make a similar list to help guide my purchases? Because I can’t just buy everything that sounds reasonable or I will very soon again be drowning in stuff. And out of money!

So how about that lottery ticket? I guess I’ll pass on that.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.