For months, this phrase “I’ve been trying to corner myself” has been ringing in my mind. When it first rang, I was frustrated by how difficult it was to figure out what to do. I felt that I could not move without actions that fit into a specific, coherent plan. I knew of many things I could do, and that would be beneficial, but without certainty that those actions were part of a sustainable balance, it felt unwise to dive headlong into action.

Sure I could focus in on one area, like cooking, and deduce what should come next. We have $15 to spend, need 800 calories, 30 grams of protein, and some plants. One hour cooking, half an hour to eat, and if I start at 6:00 p.m., it’ll all finish up by 8:00 — we’ll be grand. Ok, what about tomorrow…

The deeper I went, the more clarity I got in one area, but the more I neglected everything else. By the time a week’s meals were planned, the opportunity to go on a run had passed for the night. After a week of focus on meal planning, prepping, cooking, and cleaning, I definitely wouldn’t have written anything.

As the pressure mounted, I would switch gears from one area to another to put out the freshest fire. This time, I’d focus deeply on music or family, and meal planning would go out the window. This cycle of focus and neglect repeated itself over and over again, and frankly, continues still. Things have gotten better, though. I’ll explain why in a bit.

People tend to solve this issue in one of two ways: giving up on balance, or giving up on greatness.
Some athletes focus so relentlessly on their craft that they sacrifice a relationship with their children for glory. More commonly, people give up on being great athletes and great chefs so that they can fit more into life. This second approach makes sense because most of the benefits of a given pursuit can be gained without the stratospheric success of top-tier greatness.

Those benefits that only extreme success can bring are usually egoic pursuits, like great wealth and fame. This means that giving up greatness often means nothing more than giving up your ego. On the other hand, the transcendent quality of many great works in history came from authors and artists giving themselves over to the muses; so it’s not fair to believe that the pursuit of greatness is necessarily ego-driven.

Nonetheless, great balance is the appropriate ideal for most people. A reasonable amount of excellence across the most important areas of life grants a rich and fulfilling experience. Paradoxically, this can be harder than simply pursuing greatness in one domain. It’s much easier to run a multi-million-dollar business when you’re ok with neglecting your health, your family, and your morals.

Besides that, life is complicated even at the most basic level. To eat well and sleep well, to remain fit and friendly, to do good in the world, to explore and learn in the world, and to financially support yourself in the meanwhile is no mean feat. To do it all with excellence takes great balance.

And so, I’ve been trying to corner myself. Not into action that vaguely answers the questions life poses and arrives everywhere yet nowhere at once, but into a coherent plan for balanced action. So what has helped?

1. Decide what Areas to Balance

Splitting attention between 15 areas is unproductive. To have a real shot at a balanced plan, you need to reduce your focus to the core few pursuits that really matter. In my opinion, physical fitness, cleaning, cooking, family, finances, work, and mental/spiritual health are non-negotiable.

This is already plenty to manage. Add more at your peril, and don’t feel too terrible giving things up.
I added writing because it merges into the other areas in the long-term. And despite being a life-long musician, I chose to remove music (a painful decision) because I could not handle how much it fragmented my focus.

Be realistic, be ruthless.

2. Find the Levers

What would make a serious difference in your fitness? Your finances? Write down the areas you decided on, and beside them, write a one-sentence description of what it would take to make real progress in each of them. For instance — “cut spending on food in half.” These are your levers. These help form the plan.

Here things can get tricky. Almost by definition, levers are not actions you should be trying to do. They are achievements you can earn by performing many small, strategic actions. Yet, you need the levers to plan intelligent action.

In the example above, exercising restraint by eating an apple instead of impulse-buying a snack from Starbucks might save you $4 (say, 1% of your food bill). Predicting that you’ll be hungry at 11:00 a.m. and purchasing the apple ahead of time allows for that restraint.

Even with something so simple, three actions were involved in pulling the lever. Prediction, purchase, and the exercise of restraint.

Plan accordingly.

3. Priorities First, and Levers Are Priorities

Now that you’ve identified the paths to meaningful change, it’s time to turn those paths into priorities. From now on, when you’re thinking to yourself “what’s most important when it comes to my physical fitness?” the answer should come readily. It’s the lever you identified earlier.

If you’re going to work on, think about, talk about, invest in, or do anything else with respect to an area, it had better relate to an action that pulls on the lever.

This takes training your mind and body to notice when they wander off-track. Meditation provides this training.

4. First Dark, Then Light

Among the areas you identified, which do you feel worst about? Which excites you most? Peace comes in part from facing the darkness, and in part from basking in the sunlight. Choose as your highest priority the path and actions that challenge the darkness and fill you with dread. Go there first. When you’re done, step back into the light, and reward yourself with actions that excite you.

This approach inherently triggers Resistance. No one wants to battle their demons. For advice on dealing with that, Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art is priceless.

5. Stop Before You’re Finished

There’s not enough time in one day to reach the end of any path, if there is an end at all. Put forth a solid effort, spend what time you can afford, and stop before you’ve finished to benefit from “Hemingway’s Bridge.” When writing novels, Hemingway would stop mid-sentence at the end of the night, but only after he knew what was coming next in the story. The unresolved tension in his mind provided motivation to begin writing right away when he returned the following day.

By planning to stop before the end, and accepting uncertainty about precisely where that stopping point will be, you can relieve the pressure of feeling like you’ve failed when an objective isn’t completed in the arbitrary time you’ve set for its work.

There’s plenty more to say, but if you follow the advice above, the answer to the question “what should I do right now?” should become a little bit clearer.

At times, I have struggled with focusing on what’s in front of me — afraid that while working I’ll miss the bigger picture and regret the path I took. Looking back, my real regrets have been failing to take a path at all. Never fully committing, never pouring enough of myself into an endeavor to accomplish anything meaningful. In other words, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

When running, you have to look up to see where you’re going. Stare at your feet too long and you’ll run into a tree. But striving to better yourself doesn’t work that way. You aren’t running yet. You’re getting on your feet. Learning to take one step, then two. Getting stronger. When you lose focus on what’s in front of you in the name of seeing where you’re going, you multiply the time it takes to start running at all.

Spend too much time fretting over the ultimate impact of your efforts, and you compromise your ability to help people or contribute to a cause. Help first. Contribute first. Then course correct. Have you helped anyone today? Why not? If the honest answer is “I was too busy figuring out my true passion, purpose, etc.,” then you need to spend less time thinking.

Instead, choose an action you know would help someone and learn the skill required to perform it. Use the skill. Accomplish an objective. Then ask, how did that feel? Rack up a few of those experiences and you’ll begin to develop a sense for what you enjoy. It always feels good to help people, but which of the skills you used and which of the contributions you made matter most?

Lest you be concerned that at the end of this process you’ll remain lost — worst-case, you’ll have helped people, developed skills, and made a small difference. Believe me, you’d rather be there than still stuck at the beginning researching, wondering which path to take.

It’s human nature to avoid uncertainty. To want to know ahead of time where the scary monsters lie, so that you can stay far away from the trees they hide behind. But the real demons call you away from the forest entirely. The only way to outrun them is to step forward, into the dark unknown.