Like why shouldn’t you be a boss girlie/guy with a dream 9-5 job, 1-2 side hustles that make you passive income, a thriving love life filled with travel stories, and your house be that rivaling Vanessa Hudgens.
Oh and don’t forget, all of it well edited into tiny 30 sec trailers on instagram. Did I forget you also wanna be able to run a half marathon and lift weights?
Anyone looking at this list will go this is insane. I can’t be doing this.
(Oh did I forget eating rainbow veggies and also making time for friends. And making time for self care.)
But when you go ahead and prioritize. It gets really hard. At least for me.
And I have always wondered how do everyone seems to be doing it all. I clearly cannot.
So I wanted to share some mindshifts, and some work-in-progress systems that are working for me.
This will be a 3ish part series, because there is so much in my head.
Have a single “might-do” list
First step, commit to a place where you’ll make lists - it could be a whatsapp chat with yourself, notes, notion, app. I use an app called Habit.
All the things you want to do should be out there on it.
Our brains are meant for processing, not storing.
When you have it all visualized/ brain dumped, you can see roughly two categories.
Impact tasks - tasks you should really do and have inertia (finish a work deliverable, set a dentist appointment, call your parents)
Dopamine tasks - tasks that you would really like to do and is calling your name (book that next vacation, check out a sale, post instagram stories)
Ruthless pick 3-5 that you will do that day, with 1 of them being the highlight that gets the most focus time.
Your highlight should ideally be something that gives you 10x impact. Like if you do that, it would be really good for your career, or health, or just take out a big chunk of mental load off you!
This single running list and focusing on 1 highlight every day saves my life.
Over time, don’t be shy to delete tasks that have been in the list for weeks. I feel like if the tasks stay in there too long, they start acting as dark holes sucking in the energy.
I find deleting them, and reading them in a few days to be much helpful.
my favorite things this week
💻 Arc
I finally moved to Arc, and am so late to the party, but it’s a good party indeed! I will be honest. I haven’t found anything life changing, but I am sucker for well designed products so it does make me happy. More details to follow.
📝 Welcome to WIP by Figma’s CPO
I love how he talked about using figjam for getting feedback on docs, and having a system to indicate importance of feedback to avoid what’s called swoop and poop.
I will continue the other parts through the week. Please please do share or message me if you are in a similar boat.
i didn't know you had a newsletter!! you got me at vanessa hudgens 😹 i'm already guilty of having way too many lists in different places.