Making Big Decisions and Designing a Life
Wisdom that has helped me make some big decisions.
Hello Bar-setters!
Over the past month, I’ve been weighing a new job opportunity. This has spurred a lot of thinking about my values, the type of person I want to be, and the type of life that I want to live. A number of quotes and ideas have proved helpful throughout this process and I wanted to share those today.
The Mid-Life Trap
I’m about to turn 35. I shared with my pastor that I thought I’d have done more by now—that I haven’t yet made the impact I had expected to and that I feared that I never would.
His response is one I’ve returned to often for clarity about what matters:
The first half of life is about building a life.
The second half of life is about giving that life away.
The mid-life crisis is about dissatisfaction with the life we’ve built. At that point, we face the dangerous temptation of wanting to live the first half of life over again and miss that embracing the second half of life is where the real value of our lives is found.
There are a few books I know that reinforce this idea to some degree or another:
The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
From Strength to Strength, by Arthur Brooks
Falling Upward, by Fr. Richard Rohr
Disciplining Your Curiosity
It is funny how everyone has such different strengths and weaknesses.
One of my “demons,” believe it or not, is that I’m too curious. I want to learn too many things. This wouldn’t be a problem if I was better about having the discipline to do less and not entertain every idea that pops in my head.
I found the following quote very helpful regarding this issue:
Curiosity can empower you or impede you.
Being curious and focused is a powerful combination. I define this combination as unleashing your curiosity within the domain of a particular task: asking questions about how things work, exploring different lines of attack for solving the problem, reading ideas from outside domains while always looking for ways to transfer the knowledge back to your main task, and so on. Even though you're exploring widely, you're generally moving the ball forward on the main thing. You start something and you keep searching until you find an effective way to finish it.
Meanwhile, when your curiosity sends you off in a dozen different directions and fractures your attention, then it can prevent you from focusing on one thing long enough to see it through to completion. Curious, but unfocused. You're jumping from one topic to the next, they aren't necessarily related, your efforts don't accumulate, you're simply exploring. You start many things and finish few.
How is your curiosity being directed? Is it rocket fuel or a roadblock?
–James Clear
Making Decisions and Commitments in the Modern World
Related to this idea, is a concept that everyone must understand to live well in the modern world: The Paradox of Choice.
I’ve explained this before:
To be lost in the infinite is to be paralyzed by the abundance of options. For most of human history, there weren’t options. You hunted, gathered and helped the tribe survive. More recently, you took on the family farm after your father died, or married a farmer and raised children. Today you could be anything—a doctor, lawyer, real-estate agent, salesman, teacher, engineer, entrepreneur, or any of a billion other options, all of which come with their own pros and cons. You can move anywhere, adopt any religion, love anyone, say anything, and, generally, live any way you want.
The cruel twist to all this freedom is that the more choices we have, the more irrational those decisions become and the more unsatisfied we are with each decision. Each choice is subject to far greater buyer’s remorse as we remember the upside of all those other options we could have selected. Most importantly, as psychologist, Barry Schwartz, details in his book, The Paradox of Choice, we are far less likely to make any decision. Overwhelmed by the number of choices we spin our wheels in infinite analysis.
How to Commit and Optimize Impact
With a multitude of choices available, the only answer is to choose and commit. There are a few quotes that I returned to to help me as I prepared to commit better in my future endeavors.
You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.
–Oliver Burkeman
We all have unled lives. There will always be forks in our path. For this reason, we need clarity — we must determine what truly matters — and what doesn’t. In an interview towards the end of his life, Christopher Hitchens remarked, “One is always going to regret something; you have to decide in advance what it will be.” Who are you not? We must all choose what our unled lives will be. The art of leading a life is about deliberately choosing the type of life we want to lead.
–Josh Bertolotti
A simple filter for managing your time: You're not focused enough unless you're mourning some of the things you're saying no to.
–James Clear
Thank you for reading and sharing with any kindred spirits!
I hope you found some of these as useful as I have.
Carry the fire!
Shane
Good stuff! I am turning 40 this year and just wrote a paper for my seminary class on the mid-life transition. So I'm right there with ya on the shift from building a life to shedding the excess and giving what's valuable away.
I'm a self-proclaimed curious person as well. When I seek out information, I often find myself excitedly going down rabbit trails and then end up spread thin on deep, applicable knowledge. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on habits to focus on what's most important to you, not allowing the "good" to water down the "great".
As I'm writing this I'm processing both sections together. In this mid-life transition I'm working on sifting through all of the things I've come across and continue to come across to fine tune a key framework of things to live by. I recently had lunch with a spiritual mother to me and she had decided that she had lived long enough that she had things to share. She had put together a list of things that she had learned through her 85+ years and gave it to me. It made me think...I want to craft that list now, perhaps involving my family in the discussion, shape my life (our lives) around these values, and remind myself that they are moldable as still have so much to learn.
Love your thoughts as always and thanks for the book recommendations!