[Image Credit: Photo by Jim DeGrandis on Unsplash]
How to stop trying to optimise everything and start actually getting somewhere
Here’s the thing: most people in their thirties are constantly striving to have it all. They’re juggling career ambitions, trying to maintain relationships, fitting in exercise when they can, working on side projects, and attempting to keep up with social commitments.
The problem? Trying to excel at everything simultaneously just doesn’t work.
The Myth of Having It All
We’ve been sold a lie. Social media feeds endless examples of people who seem to excel at everything simultaneously. What we don’t see are the trade-offs. The successful entrepreneur who hasn’t read a novel since university. The fitness influencer whose social life revolves entirely around the gym. The travel blogger who’s been putting off starting a family for years.
The harsh reality: you can be anything you want, but you can’t be everything you want.
This isn’t about lowering standards or abandoning dreams. It’s about being strategic with attention and energy. When you try to water ten plants with one watering can, they all die. Focus that same effort on two or three plants, and they flourish.
The Quarter System That Actually Works
Think about your year in quarters, with each quarter having one primary focus and 1-2 supporting areas:
Q1: Career Focus
- Primary: Major project or skill development
- Supporting: Maintain basic fitness, protect weekend relationships
Q2: Health Focus
- Primary: Serious fitness goals or health improvements
- Supporting: Steady work performance, meal prep consistency
Q3: Relationships Focus
- Primary: Quality time with partner, family, and mates
- Supporting: Light exercise maintenance, cruise control at work
Q4: Personal Projects Focus
- Primary: Side business, creative pursuits, or learning
- Supporting: Networking, skill building
The magic isn’t in perfect execution—it’s in conscious choice. When fitness is the focus, expect work to plateau. When career demands attention, social life might take a backseat. This isn’t failure; it’s strategy.
The Confidence Paradox
One of the most counterintuitive truths about confidence: saying “I don’t know” is actually a superpower.
Most people exhaust themselves trying to appear knowledgeable about everything. They make decisions based on incomplete information rather than admit they need to learn more. This approach is knackering and produces terrible results.
Try radical honesty about knowledge gaps:
- “I’m not familiar with that approach—can you walk me through it?”
- “I haven’t worked with that before. What’s been your experience?”
- “I’m not sure about the best way to handle this. What are you thinking?”
The results are immediate. Conversations become collaborative. People offer insights they might have kept to themselves. Better decisions emerge because you’re working with actual information instead of guesswork.
Most importantly, the constant anxiety of “what if they ask something I don’t know?” disappears entirely.
Fear Lives in the Waiting Room
Fear has a peculiar property: it exists almost entirely in anticipation.
The anxiety before a difficult conversation is always worse than the conversation itself. The dread before a challenging presentation exceeds the actual experience. The worry about a tough decision exhausts more than making and executing it.
Action is anxiety’s kryptonite.
Instead of sitting with fear and overthinking, move towards what’s scary as quickly as possible. Not recklessly—but decisively.
- Need a difficult conversation? Schedule it for today, not next week.
- Nervous about submitting work? Hit send before talking yourself out of it.
- Intimidated by a challenge? Sign up immediately.
Fear transforms from paralysing anxiety into useful alertness the moment you start moving. It only has power when you’re sitting still.
Discipline vs. Motivation: The Great Misunderstanding
Here’s the secret disciplined people won’t tell you: they don’t wake up motivated most days.
The idea that disciplined people are naturally driven is bollocks. Everyone has days when they don’t want to exercise, work on important projects, or do necessary tasks.
The difference isn’t in the feeling—it’s in the response:
- Motivation says: “I’ll do it when I feel like it.”
- Discipline says: “I’ll do it especially when I don’t feel like it.”
Treat motivation like a bonus, not a requirement. When it shows up, brilliant. When it doesn’t, have systems that keep you moving forward anyway.
Discipline compounds. Every time you choose the harder path when you don’t feel like it, you build evidence that you’re someone who follows through. You strengthen the muscle for choosing difficulty next time.
When Everything Goes Wrong
Life occasionally delivers perfect storms of chaos. Job loss, relationship breakdown, health crises, financial disasters. The temptation is to either freeze completely or frantically try to fix everything simultaneously. Both approaches are disasters.
The solution: prioritise and execute.
You can’t solve everything at once. Make a list and pick the most urgent item. Everything else must wait. Spend focused effort on the biggest problem until there’s breathing room. Then move to the next priority.
This isn’t inspiring or dramatic. But it works. When overwhelmed, the answer isn’t to try harder—it’s to try more strategically.
The Preparation-Performance Switch
There’s a time for humility and a time for confidence. Knowing when to switch between them is game-changing.
During preparation: Be humble. Assume you don’t know enough. Plan for problems. Practice more than necessary. Ask questions. Gather information.
During performance: Flip the switch. Trust the preparation. Commit fully to the moment.
Whether it’s presentations, difficult conversations, or any challenge with preparation and execution phases—respect both modes, but don’t confuse them.
Small Changes, Big Results
Transformation doesn’t require dramatic overhauls. It happens through tiny, consistent choices that seem insignificant but compound over time.
Simple examples:
- Make the bed every morning (starts the day with completion, not avoidance)
- Write before checking email (creativity before other people’s priorities)
- Read fiction instead of scrolling before bed (better sleep, less anxiety)
None of these changes are dramatic. Together, they shift default patterns from reactive to intentional. From scattered to focused. From hoping things improve to actively making them improve.
The Long Game
The hardest part about strategic living isn’t knowing what to do—it’s accepting that progress is slower than you want and faster than you think.
Week-to-week changes are invisible. Month-to-month and year-to-year? The compound effect of conscious choices is almost magical.
Your life tomorrow results from choices made today. Not just the big, obvious ones—but the small, quiet ones that seem insignificant.
They matter more than you know.
The beauty of strategic living isn’t that you’ll never struggle—it’s that when you do struggle, you’ll struggle with purpose instead of chaos.
What will you choose to prioritise? What will you choose to let slide? What will you choose to start, and what will you choose to stop?
The time for strategic living is now. Your future self is counting on the choices you make today.
