If you remember back to high school economics, we learned about imports and exports. When a country was exporting more goods than they were importing, they were probably in pretty good shape. If they were importing more than they were exporting, things could be getting a bit dicier financially. The concept is quite simple and we can apply the same logic when we think about how to change your habits to increase fulfillment.
Letting go of expectations is something that has come up time and again in my career. Ironically, Kansas City has represented a crossroads multiple times in my life.
The first was in 2013. Having freshly finished my thesis, I was ready to enter the workforce. At the time, a federal hiring freeze was ongoing, stymying my job search. My goal, from early in my college education to that moment, was to work for the National Weather Service: an impossibility given the circumstances. Further complicating matters, I was still licking my wounds from a painful, disastrous breakup that shook me to the core a handful of months earlier. The tunnel seemed infinite; there was no light in sight.
Originally written May 16, 2022
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There never seems to ever be enough time to accomplish everything we need to get done. Yet there are activities we do every day that continually waste our most precious resource because we have built them into our routine and they have become habit.
In order to unlock more time in our day, we have to take a hard look at what we are doing and how it plays into our daily balance of activities. For me, time sinks usually fall into to a few major categories. Work inefficiencies, pleasure binging, and boredom.