planning(3/7)
Evidence based decisions reduce stress
Every parent knows the overwhelming feeling of making a decision that could affect the health of their baby. One of the first such experiences is about where they sleep. Before you leave the hospital with your newborn you’re likely to be warned about SIDS. Horrifying images of walking up to your baby’s bed to find they’re not breathing will terrify you into doing whatever the doctor says. But usually there’s a cost, and the doctor doesn’t tell you.…
The great secret of the spiritual life is that you already know the little steps
The great secret of the spiritual life is that you already know the little steps, even if you don’t know the big ones. You don’t need to know the big steps to take the little steps.
Parent with a plan
Amie, my grandmother and I watched the story of Richard Williams a couple evenings ago and I haven’t been able to get my mind off of it. Richard pulled two approaches together I didn’t think could be merged. First, he had a thorough, specific and overarching plan for his daughter’s lives. Second, he sought to build into them the independence and skill to choose their own path. His 85-page plan for his daughters might have provoked resentment had he pressured his daughters to achieve without the family’s investment.…
Any attempt to bring out ideas into reality must fall short
We fail to see, or refuse to accept, that any attempt to bring our ideas into concrete reality must inevitably fall short of our dreams, no matter how brilliantly we succeed in carrying things off–because reality, unlike fantasy, is a realm in which we don’t have limitless control, and can’t possibly hope to meet our perfectionist standards.
Everything worth doing depends on cooperating with others
Our culture’s ideal is that you alone should control your schedule, doing whatever you prefer, whenever you want–because it’s scary to confront the truth that almost everything worth doing, from marriage and parenting to business or politics, depends on cooperating with others, and therefore on exposing yourself to the emotional uncertainties of relationships.
My actual life will inevitably prove disappointing by comparision with the fantasy
It’s easy for me to fantasize about, say, a life spent achieving stellar professional success, while also excelling as a parent and partner, while also dedicating myself to training for marathons or lengthy meditation retreats or volunteering in my community–because so long as I’m only fantasizing, I get to imagine all of them unfolding simultaneously and flawlessly. As soon as I start trying to live any of those lives, though, I’ll be forced to make trade-offs–to put less time than I’d like into one of those domains, so as to make space for another–and to accept that nothing I do will go perfectly anyway, with the result that my actual life will inevitably prove disappointing by comparison with the fantasy.…
Neglect the right things
The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.
Second tier priorities are the most seductive
[Warren Buffett] tells the [pilot] to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance.…
The way of trust is a movement into ambiguity
The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment.
Where I see myself in 2024
Mike, my manager, asked me to produce a three-year-plan and a five-year-plan as a means for him to understand the trajectory of my career and know how he can help me arrive. Thoughtful question, even if it does feel a little like homework coming from my boss. The past few years we’ve barely managed to make yearly goals. The chaos of early childhood has given me a renewed sense of how little is truly under my control.…