You Don’t Need More Time. You Need Fewer Choices.

Socrates, that wise philosopher of the 5th century BC, said: "The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less." And the consensus across the centuries has always been clear: happiness isn't a destination you reach by wanting or accumulating more, but a state of mind achieved by reducing what you want. This week, I’m exploring the common problem of wanting to do more and more, yet never finding the time to do what you want.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more about the Perfect Week Calendar Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived   The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script |424 Hello, and welcome to episode 424 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  One of the most common questions I get asked is: How do I find the time to do everything I want to do?  And as David Allen said in his book Getting Things Done, you can do anything you want, but not everything.  In other words, you can do all the things you want to do, just not all at once.  This is a problem all humans have faced since the dawn of time: we are limited by the number of hours we have each day.  And before we acknowledged time and dates, we were still limited by daylight hours and the need to sleep.  In many ways, truly understanding that we will always be limited by time is the first step to discovering peace and happiness.  I remember many years ago having an argument with a colleague about why the iPhone’s constraints were better than Android’s lack of constraints. This was back in the day when you really didn’t have many options for what you could add to an iPhone’s home screen. The date and time, design, and colours were fixed, and the apps you downloaded were presented as Apple allowed them to be.  Android phones, on the other hand, let you download widgets, move your app icons wherever you wanted, and install thousands of different themes.  What was interesting is that my colleague was always fiddling with his phone. Never being happy with the way his home screen looked.  I had no choice. Which meant I wasn’t fiddling with my phone all the time, trying to find the perfect setup and design. I was therefore happy with what I had.  Funnily enough, now that Apple does give us more choice as to how our phone home screens look, I do waste a lot of time trying to find the right colour combinations and layouts. (And I’m still not happy with it!) So with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question: This week’s question comes from Scott. Scott asks: Hi Carl, I have a lot of things I want to do, such as learning to play the guitar, reading more books, and taking my kids out on the weekend. Yet I never have time to do any of these, and when I do, I’m so exhausted that all I want to do is sit and watch TV. It’s so frustrating. Do you have any ideas on how to fit all these things into my week? Hi Scott, thank you for your question.  I’m not sure whether you have completed the “Perfect Week” calendar exercise yet, but I would recommend it.  This is an exercise where you take a blank weekly calendar and map out all the things you want to do each week by when you will do them.  Start with your personal life, then add your professional life. I will put a link in the show notes to a video I did on this.  This exercise tells you whether you are being overambitious. You will quickly see if what you want to do is realistic, impossible, or somewhere in between.  What most people find when they do