Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do?

In the words of Eric Cartman's Karate instructor, "You rak dishiprin!"

What you have to realise (not just understand conceptually) is that anything worth doing -- anything significant in your life -- requires hard work. Now, before anyone here drops to the floor in a fit of cliche-driven convulsion, let me explain 'hard work'. Hard work is about being consistent and doing the same thing every day. Learning to speak and write another language fluently is not hard work; hard work is practicing every day for 5 years. Running 5k is not hard work; hard work is running every day regardless of how you feel, or what kind of a day you've had, or what the weather is like outside.

> I'm trying to organize myself to wake up @6am and go through journaling > meditating > work > exercise or read. However, I often find out I'm kind of overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship / don't have time to do other chores.

Slow down, and take a few steps back. You're not ready to manage so many goals (nobody is in the beginning). Pick one thing, just one, from your list -- whichever you enjoy the most. Can you do it every day for a month? Doesn't matter if you don't feel well, or you don't have time, or you're not feeling motivated: can you do this one thing, every day, for a month? This is discipline. This is the 'hard' in 'hard work'. Doesn't have to be a month; it could be 3 weeks or 13 weeks, it doesn't matter, it just needs to be long enough for you to realise that you've always had it in you, and that consistency is the key to achievement.

And, if you fail? So simple: start over. I've failed so many times that I think the universe is running out of failure modes for me. Keep at it. Keep going. Be consistent.

I use to be hyper motivated and constantly working towards a goal. I worked full time, went to graduate school, ran a small business (~10k annual revenue), maintained an exercise routine (3hr/week) and did household chores like cleaning and cooking(4hr/week). My total scheduled time towards those goals every week was 110-120 hours and I slept 5-6 hours every night. I remember scheduling one meal a week to eat while not commuting/working and one night a month to see friends.

I burnt out. At first the lesson I learned was that I can only do so many things, and I always get a full night sleep and I never let my schedule get near that full. Now, five years after I stopped that lifestyle I find that the things I do spend time on I do even better. I'm performing at a higher level. I think it's because I'm less stressed because I'm not constantly pushing myself. I work when it's time to work and play when it's time to play.

You cannot do all of the things that you want to do. You're time is finite. Your energy and passion are finite. Accept this. Internalize this. My advice is to pick one or two things you really care about. Devote all your passion there, but don't devote all of your time. You need some time to relax and you need some unstructured time. If you don't give yourself unstructured time you'll take it by procrastination.

My biggest suggestion here is to a) write down all the things you want to change about your life, b) pick one, c) spend at least 30 days establishing new habits around that, while d) definitely not working on anything else on that list.

If you try to change everything at once, nothing will stick. But if you get in the habit of working on one thing a month, you can devote your full brainpower to really figuring out how to do that in a way that is sustainable for yourself.

P.S. "1. Write a personal journal / meditate / exercise" is definitely not 1 thing. That's three things. That suggests strongly to me that your desire to cram things in is part of the problem. To make lasting change, you have to be patient, compassionate, and honest with yourself. Here that means accepting that adopting even 1 of those 3 things is hard work that requires practice. Indeed, you may have to split them further. "Exercise" is a huge area. Try starting with something smaller, like "do a couch-to-5k program" or "do 10 minutes of stretching daily".

I found something that works really well for me. I don’t wait until I “find” time to do the things I want to do. I create a calendar and a routine and I “make” time for them. This also allowed me to have a conversation with my wife about these things and we made compromises on a reasonable balance. This way I’m able to make time for my family as well. It can be a little hectic to always be living on a schedule that I made for myself but each week feels so productive that it seems to suit my personality well. The downside, and it’s possibly a really big downside, is my life seems to be flashing by so fast. This kind of worries me but I’m just not the kind of person who can make well with idle time.

From being in a similar situation here is what I learned recently. You have Finite time and you have finite energy, usually people want to do more things than they have available resources for. You have to internalize and accept this. You cannot accomplish all the tasks you want to do sustainably.

Fully internalizing this allows you to find what it is you really care about. For example you want to write a personal journal not for journaling sake but there is a goal you are trying to achieve that you think journaling is the way to reach it, same with meditation, work and everything on your list. They are tasks that lead to a goal. Accepting you have limited time allows you to prioritize your goals. When you do this you will be able to focus on what is truly important to you. Not everything on your list will move the needle to your real goals, slash them. Working hard and pushing yourself does not gaurantee success... remeber to live the life you want not the one you think you have to live to get the life you want.

I just do some things. These are my priorities:

Maintain a healthy relationship

Socialize and enjoy life

Maintain a healthy body

Experiment and try new things.

I spend a disproportionate number hours working, I don’t see a reason to prioritize it beyond that it naturally is prioritized (regular baseline hours and obvious objectives).

We all have our baseline for how much we can accomplish and it is important to not force yourself into a mode of life that you cannot sustain or which makes you miserable.

Sleep in, go for walks, don’t fret about leaving things unfinished if they’re not sparking anything in you.

I guess this is to say, don’t do things for their sake, do them for your own sake. Enough things will fall off that your time will allocate itself naturally.

If you procrastinate because you feel overwhelmed, it may help to start with meditation and the bare essentials of the other items. That way you can work on aligning the part of your mind which seeks to accomplish these things (manager) with the part that actually does the work (laborer). You may find that the manager needs to lower its expectations while the laborer needs fewer tasks in order to do a good job at the tasks it is given.

Anecdotally, I’ve found that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation. If you’re trying to keep up with someone else, question or examine that.

Ask yourself why on the one hand you are "trying to do" those things, and yet at the same time you find excuses to procrastinate. Are these things you truly want to do, or things you believe you "should" be doing? In other words, are these passions or duties?

If they are self-imposed duties, ask yourself how important are they, truly. What would happen if you didn't do each of them? How bad would it be? If it's really bad, that's your motivation for doing them, and next time you want to procrastinate you can remind yourself of that reason.

I am in a almost identical situation (except the journal part :D ). Although I haven't applied any solution, yet, I think the problem (at least for me) is the fact that I try to do everything of every item. I think the following would help: 1. Wake up early every day of the. You might compensate for a small nap mid-day. 2. Have work days to do your reading, learning, exercise and have the weekends for your relationship and socializing. 3. Calculate how much hours you have on your work days and exploit them as much as possible. 4. From time to time, do something to rest your mind: trip, travel, etc. 5. Focus on something specific in every item.

Bottom line, organize yourself, have a schedule and commit to it.

My tip. Plan less. I used to be in the same situation and I would meticulously plan out each day and fit all the things I wanted to do in neat little boxes in the calendar.

THe problem was that going through that neatly planned schedule took the fun out of all of it. I wasn’t enjoying the things that I had planned, even though they where things that I wanted to do. I was just going through the motions, checking things off.

Today. I try to keep a clear schedule, I don’t try to think of all the things I want to do. I don’t plan too much. Instead I just do the things that I want to do whenever they occur to me.

Keeping a clear schedule makes it more likely that I will actually have the time to do those things.

IMO there does not exist a perfect balance to be maintained. What defines balance is context, and you are eternally gaining new context. Hindsight often is a perceptive trap insofar that when looking back, you perceive it to have been possible to have known then what you know now and thus resolve that the path to perfection is in having a perfect plan. This is false. There was not a way for you to have known what was then the future before it came to pass.

So, what I personally do is just get started with whatever approach with the full knowledge that I will forever be refining and adding to that approach. Routinely check in with your context, what you are doing, and how those are informing each other and interacting to produce the results you are getting. For example, if you find that you are losing too much time journaling, do less of it. Figure out why, though. Maybe it is because work is busier than usual. Retain this information because it will allow you to make plans that are closer to perfect.

Basically what I'm saying is just get started. Moving in a direction is what is important, not necessarily getting to any place in particular. Understand what you are doing, and make sure you keep updating that understanding and remain fundamentally humble to the fact that you'll never strike a perfect balance.

First step: come to terms with the fact that you cannot do everything that you want to do.

Most things suck or are not directly relevant to your immediate situation. Thus you can eliminate and prioritize.

A lot of those goals seem generally good but won't necessarily benefit you like they benefit others. So you shouldn't feel obligated to have them, and let them go. Journals/meditation/exercise/reading material etc all solve specific problems, they shouldn't be treated like they're absolute must-haves without context.

If you truly are ambitious and not afflicted by mimyesis (most of those goals are vague and high-level/generic/conventional, likely not informed by what your real opportunities are, or if they are you aren't describing them, which suggests that they're not coming from you), then the most important thing is to have the capacity of achieving those goals over your lifetime.

This mainly implies good health -- bite the bullet and prioritize exercise first, buy a gym subscription and trainer to push you to accomplishment and give you the presence of mind and body to feel more energetic and willful towards your goals through life.

"Socializing" would be a good second priority because problems and interests rarely occur in a vaccuum, they occur relative to other people and their traditions of practice. If you don't have a sense of your interests or don't feel like you have any real problems, get some by treating that as your first problem and start exploring your interests based off of your own hunches until the larger picture forms. This also constrains the vaguer goals like "Read" (lol) and even "Study" (when you link up to other developers).

IMO the way to more productivity is by starting with small amounts of productivity and do the most natural least effort way of doing it first, then improve. Starting habits is hard, and sustaining them is hard, but doing them tends to be easy, which means that you want to figure out the least intimidating way to do them first so that you'll actually start it, then build up to sustain it.

I can't reiterate enough: if it isn't critical, put it off until later, and just do the most useful thing until it stops being useful. You're under no obligation to accomplish these tasks and there isn't anyone watching over you to accomplish them. Just do these things for you and because you want them or need to now, and you'll be OK.

If you work full time You might not be able to manage all these things in a satisfactory way.

First make sure you have sane foundations: enough sleep + exercise + proper diet.

Then experiment and see what sticks. I find it easier to meditate right after I wake up and take a shower, I also manage to do 10-15 min of stretches/yoga.

Reading is the perfect pre bed activity, dim the lights, make some tea, read until you're too tired to continue.

I also found that some activities are just not a fit for me. Maybe you like the idea of, let's say, journaling, but in practice you don't like it = you procrastinate to avoid doing it. Focus on what you truly enjoy doing and build habits from here.

> I'm kind of overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship / don't have time to do other chores.

It's also a matter of expectations, you can't do 10 things and excel in all of them. You can't watch all the new Netflix shows, meditate one hour a day, learn to be a professional guitar player, &c. while working full time and having a kid. Pick your battle(s).

I used to think that making it to the gym daily was impossible with my schedule. Then I joined a workout challenge/bet with some friends. I quickly found that I could always find 30min in a day for exercise, it was just prioritization. I despise working out, and yet I could get it done. So, now, when I have another task I need to accomplish that will only take 30 minutes, and I’ve found myself putting it off because “there’s not enough time”, I now know it’s just an excuse. But as others have said, prioritize what you want to accomplish. Do one consistently, then add a second, etc. You’ll eventually find a breaking point. We all do. Today, mine is somewhere after cooking breakfast, and before unloading the dishwasher.

The thing bugging you is what David burns calls a "shouldy approach to life". It's a common trap which can cause misery and unhappiness. I think his book feeling good can help you or Maybe googling the term may also give you so relevant results

I found a new method which is called “Don’t break a chain!”. For me, this is really helpful method. I have selected few things (for example, practice German, read a book and do sports) and I do it everyday, then I put (x - check mark) to my application. After some time when I see that I already did certain things for some days this motivates me more and I kept doing again and again. I have another rule that I can have one day “free x” per week which means I’m allowed to skip one day per week, but I can still put check mark to my chain. If I don’t have this rule in one day if for some reason I can not do the activity my chain will break and it will be very hard to start again building a new chain.

I mean either pick something and do it or don’t? If you really wanted to do any of those things you’d be doing them instead of not doing them.

It’s fine to accomplish nothing. It’s all pointless anyway. If doing nothing is what you’re prioritizing, just accept it.

It seems to me that you are trying too hard to build a detailed conquest map of an unknown (to yourself) territory. How about you stop torturing that partner of yours with your own perceived inadequacy, how about you drop all them things that you can't seemingly carry on, how about you start with a habit journal and go from there? Pick one habit: exercise for half an hour every other day. Feel around what being that person is like. Visualise new outcome, pick an additional habit, journal. Feel.

And don't spend all of that time in your own head, go outside and do things. Pick up a skill and use it. Get paid. Feel.

Heed. I was you. I am you. No more. Cheers.

Pick the one thing you are obsessive about, and then blend in the things that aid your great obsession. Some days you'll do more than others, you need a long term view; some things take years and years to achieve.

Happened the same to me. I felt really overwhelmed. The only solution I have is doing less. Furthermore I pick things which do require no/low maintainence/time/energy. Now I feel much more satisfied.

The real question to me is how and when to say no. Accepting I won't have the time for everything and chosing certain activities which makes my future freedom broad.

My priorities are: health(physical activity & food), connections: close family + a few close friends - and dedicated "random" time to feel more freedom and have some opportunity + work(+personal project)

Consider scheduling changes. E.g. I used to find it really hard to exercise after a day at work, then I changed to exercise in the mornings instead and suddenly I had much less trouble motivating myself.

Also consider trimming down the amount you are trying to do until you are in a routine - can't find time for journalling and meditation and exercise? Start with just one of those and move from there when you are in the habit.

Can you combine some activities? E.g. replace commute with biking to work? Or read while commuting?

Good luck

I just pick one thing outside of work I want to achieve at a time. I don't actually care about the results - everything that's in my brain is ash in 60 years time anyway - but I enjoy the feeling of self improvement. But I don't need to do that much to get that feeling.

I’m running my startup, it requires a shit tone of self-organization. Also, I have too many interest to be able to persuade all of them. What helps me the most is a check-in question: “What thing that you will accomplish or move further forward today will make you the most satisfied and happy?” I try to do that thing. Removing blockers for others is usually my first priority in the beginning of the day.

Little by little things get done. When you wake up in the morning you don’t start “remodeling a house” you install door knobs. You don’t “build a new web app” you work on a feature. It doesn’t matter how much work you get done, just that you’re making progress. Chip away at your goals and forgive yourself when you don’t complete everything you wanted and try again tomorrow.

Figuring out what you really want can be motivating. This book is great for prioritizing that, highly recommended https://www.spring.org.uk/spark-how-to-get-motivated

I’ve found that tending to my emotional state will make the important stuff get done, because I naturally focus on it. Procrastination, for me, is usually either a mismatch between what my conscious and subconscious believe to be important or fear of doing something unfamiliar.

Clearly, I don't. Otherwise, I would be out doing something other than replying on Hacker news ;)

I do pretty often check-ins to make sure I am doing the things I want and have the priorities I want to have. It is hard and a struggle always, but with some nudges to stay on point it seems to work :)

And, be kind to myself when I fall out of whack and need to make some adjustments.

Maybe give "Designing Your Life" (https://designingyour.life/) a try, as it can help you to get a clearer picture of what you want.

I don't.

Longer answer is that I just pick whatever I feel like working on whenever I have free time. I probably have personal projects to keep me busy for years at this point.

Use Warren Buffet's Two List Strategy.

https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus

most important: stop reading HN! ;)