You Can’t Do All the Things (And That’s Not a Personal Failure)
Why Choosing Less Is the Only Way to Do What Matters
At some point, most people realize something quietly and a little uncomfortably:
There is no possible way to do all the things you’re supposed to do.
Not because you’re lazy.
Not because you don’t care.
But because there aren’t enough hours in the day.
I was reminded of this recently while reading a post by James Clear outlining a set of habits we should be doing. Things like walking daily, journaling, meditating, exercising, reading, and generally taking good care of ourselves.
I don’t disagree with him.
In fact, I agree with almost all of it.
But I do think there’s a major flaw in how we tend to receive advice like this.
We rarely put time next to the list.
We rarely account for how much time each of those things actually takes.
The Things You’re Supposed to Do
Before we even get to “good habits,” there’s basic adult life.
You’re supposed to:
Work for someone else or run a business
Sleep about 8 hours
Wind down before bed (no screens, no blue light)
Get ready in the morning
Eat real meals
Shop for food
Cook
Clean
Do laundry
Take out the trash and recycling
Mow the lawn
Shovel snow after a big storm
Get oil changes
Take your pet to the vet
Get haircuts
Get haircuts for your kids
Schedule and attend doctor appointments
Go to the dentist
File taxes
Buy birthday presents
Have friends over for dinner
Read to your kids
Show up for school events
Handle the random Monday-morning problems that don’t appear on any list
That alone quietly consumes most of a week.
And then we layer on…
The “Good Habits” Layer
This is where modern self-improvement advice usually enters, often with the best intentions.
You’re supposed to:
Exercise regularly
Walk daily
Stretch or do mobility work
Journal
Meditate
Read for fun
Read for growth
Practice an instrument
Work on creative art projects
Start writing that poetry you’ve always meant to write
Visit local museums
Take continuing education classes
Learn something new
Reflect
Sit still
Be bored (because boredom is apparently good for your brain)
Reach out to friends
Maintain community connections
None of these are bad.
Many of them are deeply good.
And yet…
The Math Still Doesn’t Work
After sleep, work, commuting, eating, and basic household maintenance, most people are left with a small sliver of discretionary time.
And for many people, work isn’t eight clean hours. It’s ten or twelve once you account for emails, evenings, weekends, and the mental load that follows you home.
That sliver is expected to hold:
Health
Relationships
Creativity
Learning
Meaning
Growth
Rest
It simply doesn’t fit.
So the problem isn’t that we don’t know what matters.
The problem is that we cannot do everything that matters.
The Missing Question
Most advice focuses on addition.
Add a walk.
Add journaling.
Add meditation.
But very few people ask the harder, more honest question:
What are you going to stop doing to make room for that?
Because if you don’t choose intentionally, something else will.
Scrolling.
Background TV.
Low-value distractions.
A carousel of “important” things that never quite take hold.
Inches vs Miles
When everything feels important, energy gets spread thin.
You make an inch of progress in twenty directions and wonder why nothing feels satisfying.
At this point in my life, I don’t want inches.
I want miles.
And miles require saying:
“I am not moving forward over there.”
Not because it’s bad.
Because it doesn’t fit the life I’m trying to build.
What Subtraction Actually Looks Like
The macro choice:
For most of my teaching career, I’ve worked four days a week instead of five.
That meant accepting 20% less income.
Sometimes I filled that fifth day with other work to make up the difference. Sometimes I didn’t.
But that one day created time freedom that became invaluable.
Not because Fridays off are luxurious.
Because margin is necessary.
This choice wasn’t available to everyone, but it was available to me, and I still had to actively choose it over the default of more money.
The micro choice it made possible:
This past Thursday, after eight hours of attention-demanding teaching, my 10-year-old daughter asked me to read a book with her.
Not a new book.
A Busytown mystery — the kind I’ve read roughly one million times and could probably recite from memory at this point.
She wanted to relive her younger years and solve a mystery we obviously already knew the answer to.
It was lighthearted and a little nostalgic, and the meaning was clear: she just wanted time together doing something.
That’s not what I would have chosen to do on my own.
And honestly, after eight hours of teaching, part of me just wanted to stare at the ceiling and let my brain detach.
But I said yes.
Not because I was bursting with energy.
Because I had energy.
And I only had energy because I wasn’t running on fumes from five straight days.
What I didn’t do instead:
I didn’t read responses to my Facebook post.
I didn’t watch another YouTube video on how to build a sustainable shed.
I didn’t lay on the couch recovering.
I chose presence in that moment because I’d already chosen margin in my life.
Subtraction at the life-design level creates bandwidth for presence at the moment-to-moment level.
A Personal Example (Money)
This same principle of intentional subtraction has shaped our financial choices too.
I didn’t set out to live in an apartment building with my family, or to be the landlord of it.
That wasn’t a dream or a goal.
But choosing that living arrangement meant lower housing costs for us, and rental income from the other units reduced our overall expenses.
We also chose to have one car.
That’s less convenient.
And it’s also less expensive.
Those choices weren’t about deprivation.
They were about making other things possible.
This way of thinking connects directly to how I’ve written about Enough and about Priorities, Passions, Play, and Problems.
You can’t fund everything.
You can’t pursue everything.
So you decide what comes first and what doesn’t make the cut.
The Quiet Truth
You don’t need better habits.
You don’t need more discipline.
You don’t need another list.
You need fewer directions.
Because when you put all the things on the table and attach time to them, one thing becomes obvious:
Clarity doesn’t come from doing more.
It comes from choosing less.
And that’s not giving up.
That’s how what matters finally gets the space to exist.