I have decision paralysis in organizing my work and self-study flow. While working on one thing, I keep agonizing as to if that’s what I should be doing and lose time doing so. I keep trying to let go of this mindset and I just fail.
How do I improve on this, how do I make sure that I don’t lose time while trying to buy time by optimizing my workload? Is my workload too much? Am I trying to achieve a lot of things at once? But if I don’t, I’ll probably never get to where I have to be, yet chasing all of this means I’ll be stuck in a spot for a long while, perhaps I let go of my dreams and just lay flat.
I try fixating certain tasks to certain times, I’ve cut down on a lot of things, creating a huge backlog that I might not go through in 10 lifetimes.
How do you make sure you do the things you have to do, when you have to do them and not feel like it’s a waste of time you should put elsewhere even after you’ve decided that the task at hand is paramount?
By doing less things and forcing myself to worry less. I’d wager that a lot of what you’re fretting over is not absolutely vital to survival. If it was you wouldn’t have time to fret about it like this.
Attempting to optimize your entire life in some vain attempt to maximize certain outcomes is a fools errand that reveals a significant lack of maturity and life experience.
There are plenty of people in the world who put far less effort in and will be more successful than you, and plenty of people putting in more effort who will be less successful than you. One of the most unfair parts of reality is that level of expended effort is not a reliable determinator of quality of outcome, except that putting no effort in guarantees failure.
There will be plenty of times in life where all the effort in the world is undone be factors outside of your control. There will be plenty of times in life where despite everything aligning against you, you will still succeed.
All of this is not to say that you should just give up on your plans and dreams, because you’re nearly guaranteed to not achieve them if you aren’t trying. What I’m trying to say is that you need to be open to opportunities outside your plans. You need to understand that personal plans you make for yourself are not some sort of contract with the universe guaranteeing certain outcomes if you follow certain actions. Don’t steal joy from the present for some hypothetical future that may or may not come to pass.
The reality is that most people don’t end up where they planned to be when they were younger, or even working in a field they studied for. Most people don’t end up doing great amazing things or leaving a mark on the world outside the immediate lives they interact with on the way to the grave.
There’s a very common saying, with permutations of the concept the world over: Man plans, god laughs.
If I had pinned the concept of my self worth to the idea of where I thought my life was going or where I thought it needed to go when I was 16, 18, 21, or even 25… if that was some true determinant of success or happiness… I would have killed myself ages ago.
I’m nowhere close to where I thought I would be, but I am proud of where I am, what I do for income, what I do for fun, what I have accomplished over the years, etc. While it may be cope, I honestly feel like I have a better relationship with myself for my circuitous path.
Another saying with concepts echoed in different forms: “It’s about the journey, not the destination”.