I’ve been an insane ball of energy lately. I’m reading about 20 books and 10-20 magazines now, I’m learning 2 different programming language, making wine, planning events and more events, blogging and updating a lot of personal sites, running a growing business and a couple fun businesses, taking golf lessons, planning to start making cheese, swimming, practicing chess, trying to get a band together, trying to learn guitar, and some other stuff I’ve forgotten about.
I often enjoy having a million things going on. I’ve been trying to move at least one thing measurably forward per day. This isn’t always easy, especially with things like learning guitar where measuring progress is sometimes very difficult from day to day. But, that’s my strategy.
Lately I’m a bit worried that I’m not paying enough attention to my health, though. So, that’s the thing I’m starting to think about now. Now, here’s the big catch…I think I’d be healthier and less stressed if I worked just as hard as I do now, but on a lot fewer things. Is there anyone out there in blog-reading land who has gone from being a scatterbrain to being a focused person and found it less stressful? Can it be done?
Focusing on fewer things (aka deciding what’s “really important”) is often mentioned in those books like “Getting Things Done” and “Simplify Your Life.” I think there is something to it; I have focused on less things recently and have found myself less stressed and with a better sense of accomplishment.
That said, I think that one needs to keep all those other projects somewhere, like in a Someday/Maybe file, and revisit them regularly to assess whether they are still something you want to do, or if they can be shredded out of existence.
Not that I know much about not being stressed. 🙂