Over the course of our lives, we begin to realise how scarce time is. We hear constant reminders of this, from the news reminding us of how bleak and uncertain the future of humanity is to life events that remind us how fast the perception of time is and how we should cherish every moment.
This doesn’t always mean that we will. In fact, often, we’ll feel like we should spend every waking second in motion, but after a lagging period, that emotion dies down and we revert to our baseline. I’ll discuss this more in a future essay, when I discuss the usage of sine graph dynamics in everyday life.
There are also occasions where we’ll feel the need to rush and do a thousand things simultaneously because we perceive a scarcity of time to do it in. I think this feeling is pretty normal for most people, but the state of overwhelm is something we could do a better job of understanding.
So the question is; how do we deal with these feelings to burst into action on multiple planes?
I can’t imagine there’s a singular answer for this, but I’ll share what I believe has been helpful for me in the past and I can only hope it provides an insight into how you can deal with this or provide you a foundation of which you can build your own mental model upon.
The first thing is to identify and acknowledge this emotion. Very frequently, you’ll hear me continue to use identification as a first step to solving a wide array of problems and that’s because it’s probably the best way to begin the conquest of solving. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is.
In this situation, you would identify that you want to pursue multiple avenues and get all of it completed in a very short time frame. The thought of inaction in this moment feels painful. Strangely enough, there are times when this emotion can rear its head in the worst possible times, sometimes in the middle of the night.
After identifying the emotion and what your emotion wants you to do, acknowledge it, but don’t internalise it. As human beings, it’s incredibly easy to believe we are a certain person based on the emotion and thought we currently experience.
But that is far from the truth. Human beings act in alignment to what they believe their identity is and identities are not just thoughts. In fact, here’s how I believe the process of an identity is formed:
This means that our identities are really tied down to our perceptions of certain situations and the temporary thoughts and feelings don’t have to become tied to our identity unless we let it.
After acknowledging this, it’s a good idea to take some form of action to alleviate the emotion, this isn’t always a good idea (see above about waking up at 2am), but if it is possible, then take it. Something I like to do is to write out every single thing I want to do at that given moment.
I like to remind myself that time is less scarce than we think. Yes, we are all finite creatures bound for a blip across time on a 1px pale blue dot, but life is a lot longer than we think. Breathe and remember that you can accomplish all of the things on your mind, one bit at a time. You can’t build a wall in a day, but maybe over the course of a few weeks/months/years, it can be done, brick by brick.
Beyond this, if you must take action on these desires, pick one thing. This has to be a deliberated decision however, as if you waver too frequently, you’ll not make progress. It’ll also ideally be something you can measure with a metric, quantitative or qualitative, progress inspires progress
A way you can make this decision easier is to identify where your long-term interests lie. By doing this, you immediately remove any myopic desires that may not have had any benefit to you.
If you’ve made this decision and committed to it, take action towards it and have the knowledge that it’s perfectly acceptable to be the beginner and know nothing. In fact, it’s almost beautiful in and of itself, that you are completely clueless, as it presents the opportunity to grow without bias.
It is also worth noting, that anything of long-term value will take a while to observe returns. You cannot expect asymmetric returns without conducting consistent efforts over a given time horizon. Consistency will pay off, eventually.