Focus is More Than Time
I didn’t write much in 2024, but I did lose 35 pounds.
Each year, I make a list of goals. I don’t necessarily think of them as New Year’s resolutions, just ways that I would like to express my values and interests in the coming year. In 2023, I did really well with my goals, except one. Like so many, the exception that tripped me up was physical health. I wanted to lose some weight and get in better shape, but I hadn’t made any progress.
My wife and I each had some numbers from our last doctor appointments that we needed to improve, so we decided to tackle it together in 2024 and make health a top priority in our house. We had different goals and methods, but having your partner on your team makes a huge difference! I started tracking calories and returned to the modest basement gym we assembled a few years ago. And the work brought results for both of us - faster and better than we had hoped!
The thing about goals is that most things worth doing are hard. Progress requires both time and energy. Eating well and exercising feel good but take more time and energy than not doing those things. I naively thought I could add the required effort to everything else happening in my life and still maintain my other goals for reading, writing, and music-making from the year before. But we are finite humans, and our energy and focus are limited. I had necessarily exchanged some of the attention I had given those other pursuits in 2023 for the goal that had become my highest priority in 2024.
Why do we take on more than we can actually accomplish? It was hard to accept that I wasn’t writing, reading, or recording as much as I had hoped because I still had enough time. But I was tired and unmotivated to spend time on those things at the end of the day. I had to recognize that, in this season of life, I usually run out of energy before I run out of time. Prioritizing involves more than simply scheduling - I also need to budget my focus.
In the end, achieving my health goals was worth letting some other things go to the back burner. Now that I’m more focused on maintaining my weight and eating habits instead of pursuing significant changes, I’m finding better balance and reprioritizing other important activities (like writing here). As I type this, it is the beginning of March. Originally, I had planned to publish this post in December, before the New Year. Now many of our resolutions and other goals have already come and gone. So this is still a work in progress!
I’m trying to give myself some grace and approach my 2025 goals thoughtfully and realistically because things worth doing are worth doing well, and there is only so much time and attention to go around. If you’re in the same boat, there’s no shame in identifying your most important goal and putting all your resources behind it. It’s far better to accomplish something and do it well than spread yourself too thin to see real progress on anything.
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