A lot of the material in the book I reviewed two weeks ago, Win at Work & Succeed at Life by Michael Hyatt and daughter Megan Hyatt Miller, hit home for me more than I would often admit. Simply put, I have been there, and I recognize that what the authors talk about is a constant battle. It’s one that continues to this day.
For me, though, this struggle has manifest itself differently than for many, and continues to. As the authors allude to in the book, this is something that will be ongoing, especially since our lives go through different seasons, which also means priorities change.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a person who wanted to do as much as possible with my life. I was never one who just went to school, came home, did homework, went to sleep, rinsed and repeated. I played sports growing up, largely candlepin bowling, baseball and basketball, and often not just in organized leagues. I also got involved in other student activities, especially in high school and college. As a college kid, my weeks were often dotted with student group and related meetings while studying electrical and computer engineering and being a resident assistant for the last year-plus on campus. I was also a manager with men’s basketball for three years.
This didn’t really change upon graduation. Before long, I had the opportunity to do a lot more with college basketball, spending over 18 years covering the sport with well over 2,000 pieces of content. I played and coached baseball until 2005, took courses at colleges to add new skills or improve existing ones, went to some meetings of technical organizations like the IEEE and was a jazz aficionado who frequently took in live performances. I would annually spend over a month’s worth of nights in hotels on the road, largely for basketball but also at events like the Capital Jazz Fest, which I attended every one of from 2000 to 2014 and always called the best weekend of the year.
Down time? There was very little. Most of it was from about mid-July through about Labor Day weekend, maybe a little breathing room between late September and the start of the college basketball season.
Sleep? I had it down to a science: I would cut myself off most weeknights at 2 a.m. and stay up later if I could manage it on Friday and Saturday nights, and would still be up early in the morning to go to my day job on the weekdays. I have taken many a 6 a.m. flight, many of them out of BWI Airport, interestingly enough. On many occasions, those flights began a day that included a full day at the office at my day job after a busy weekend.
None of this, mind you, came from overly demanding employers. I realize I am fortunate in this regard. I did once work at a company where on rare occasions I would get a call on my cell phone around 8 p.m. or on a weekend day, but they were exceedingly rare and balanced out by the fact that there were many weeks I didn’t put in 40 hours physically in the office and no one batted an eye. There was an easy remote work setup there and I took advantage when I needed the flexibility.
Instead, my challenge has come from what I do outside of work, as noted above. In fact, one thing that also got pushed aside for a long time was reading books – I rarely gave myself the chance to, especially during the college basketball season, and even when I went light starting in mid-July, I usually spent time first catching up on periodical reading. Over a year ago, I threw down the gauntlet with myself – I am going to start reading books regularly again. This, of course, is one more demand I am placing on my time and energy, and thus one more element of managing myself.
I got away with all of this for a long time. But I’m finding that I can’t do it anymore. For most of those years, I was single. I knew if I was ever in a relationship, things would change, and admittedly I resisted some of the change for a while when that first happened. Once I became a dad, I knew there could be no more resisting. Even so, I maintain a busy slate oftentimes, and while my health has largely held up, sleep has been a battle in more recent times.
All of this is to share that I can relate to what the book talks about. I am part of the intended audience, albeit for slightly different reasons. And I am making strides to get better in what will continue to be an ongoing battle, especially as I move through the current season of my life and later into another one. Right now, I’m not a single twentysomething with no children – I’m almost 45, married with a young boy I love and a day job with a world of potential.
Little by little, I am cutting things out that don’t serve me after making the tough decision to sunset my basketball site and business. I am constantly re-prioritizing the commitments I make, so that I won’t commit to something but then take on less than I thought or find that I might have over-promised. I think long and hard before taking on any new commitments after one is no longer active. I have let periodical subscriptions lapse and have a couple of others set to go soon by not renewing them. They have value, but not enough for me in my current stage of life.
I am still trying to do a lot in this life, but the priorities are different and will be different again some time from now. Adding more breathing room of late and adding more in the near future will make it easier to accomplish all that I hope to.