Choosing What To Suck At (On Purpose)

Oliver Burkeman has this idea I love — about pre-deciding what you're going to suck at.

It flies in the face of every motivational poster that lined your grade school hallway. You can’t “do it all.” You can’t “have it all.” And despite what your second-grade teacher told you, you absolutely cannot be an astronaut-chef-dolphin-trainer who also has six-pack abs and emotionally intelligent children.

There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs. Every yes is a hundred invisible no’s.

And if you don’t choose your no’s in advance, your laziest, most hedonic self will step in to do the choosing for you. And let’s be honest — that guy has the decision-making acumen of a hungover raccoon in a 7-Eleven.

So what do you do?

You pre-disappoint people. You consciously pick areas of life where you’re okay being below average — because it’s the only way to be great at what matters right now.

For me, that filtering mechanism comes down to values. One of mine is: I want my wife to have an easy life.

So, I try as often as I can to make macro decisions that set our family up for success and take the brunt of the logistical complexity off her plate.

A Snapshot of the Chaos

The last week?

• Baby sleep regression!

• We had a final cochlear implant consult for our son.

• Crammed in a half-dozen friends and family visits (which were a breath of fresh air).

• And oh yeah — we spontaneously decided to list our house. We assumed it would take a couple months of fact-finding. Instead, we met a realtor and within 10 days, we’re staging, shooting and prepping for showings.

What did I get done that week besides that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I don’t even feel bad about it.

The next few months look equally... ambitious.

• Major surgery for our son.

• A city move and house purchase.

• A week-long work trip to Las Vegas.

• And the emotional masochism of watching the Leafs flame out in Round 1 again — only to lose a top-10 player in the offseason because the cap is imaginary and pain is eternal.

So no, I’m not relaunching a weekly podcast cadence — though I do have some thoughts in the works to get things up and running again.

Or building an extended lead magnet for this newsletter.

Or pretending this is the season to crush new projects.

I'm choosing in advance to suck at everything that isn’t directly related to reducing household stress.

The Case for Periodization

This is why I think life needs to be periodized — like a good training block. You don’t train for a marathon for 40 weeks straight.

You can get through anything with an end date. You can handle the chaos if you know it’s seasonal.

Think of your bandwidth like spinning plates. Trying to keep eight of them going 24/7 is a recipe for a broken plate and a bleeding toe. But two plates at a time? Totally doable.

At the start of this year, I was in my self-reflection and 75 Hard season. Right now, I’m in keep-the-family-afloat season. Maybe Q3 is get-back-in-the-gym-and-build-something season.

Everything is seasonal.

(Unless you're British, in which case it's a “series,” and we make the American spin-off. Sometimes better. Usually worse.)

What’s Your Plate Count?

I’d encourage you to ask: What’s on your metaphorical table right now that you could pre-decide to suck at?

Pretending you can keep all the plates spinning indefinitely isn’t heroic, it’s ensuring failure.

Words I Wish I Wrote

Links & Learnings

• Blind Schizophrenics don’t exist. (source)

• Do you have a mental illness? Why some people answer ‘yes’, even if they haven’t been diagnosed.

• The Cognitive Bias Codex

Psst… DSTLLD has a podcast now, too. I know — like the world needs another podcast, right? But here’s the thing: if you can tolerate my written rambles, you’ll probably find my in-person yammering… well, moderately tolerable. It’s basically me and a guest chatting about the same offbeat stuff you read here, except now you get to hear me stumble over big words in real time. I’m not saying it’s the greatest thing in the universe (trust me, I’ve listened to it), but if you like DSTLLD, there’s a good chance you won’t hate it. Win-win! Subscribe or follow on your favourite podcast platform:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple

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PHOTW: There is a direct correlation between your success in life and the amount of times your father threw you in the air as a child.