“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” —William James
I remember reading this surprising productivity tip from the book “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results” by Gary Keller - One of the greatest “thieves of productivity” is Fear of Chaos. A fear of being so perfectionist, & cannot cope living with messiness.
“One of the greatest thieves of productivity is the unwillingness to allow for chaos or the lack of creativity in dealing with it.
Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up while you bear down on a singular priority. Unfortunately, there’s no pause or stop button. You can’t run life in slow motion. Wishing you could will just make you miserable and disappointed.
The truth is, it’s a package deal. When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up. In fact, other areas of your life may experience chaos in direct proportion to the time you put in on your ONE Thing. It’s important for you to accept this instead of fighting it. Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola warns us that “anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.”
In other words, get used to it and get over it."
(End quote)
In practice, what this means is that we must learn to be less of a perfectionist. Accept that we cannot 100% achieve everything. We have to train ourselves to adapt to the chaos and live with the messiness, as we try to achieve our main goals. Or else we will be constantly “firefighting”, responding to problems and constantly be unhappy with ourselves as we live with matters being unresolved.
In our interview with Ustaz Shareef El-Arbi on The Barakah Effect, we ask him about his “secret” of time management: How does he balance between between his full-time career, managing his family, regularly conducting multiple islamic classes, giving da’wah, as well as continuously seeking knowledge?
His first response: “you will always fall short in one area or another because everything has to be at the expense of something else. The more you pursue dunya, the more you will neglect the akhirah. And the most you pursue akhirah, the more you will neglect your dunya”
What an enlightening and unexpetected response! In a few words, he demonstrates, in practice what is meant by the words of the Prophet ﷺ:
مَنْ أَحَبَّ دُنْيَاهُ أَضَرَّ بِآخِرَتِهِ وَمَنْ أَحَبَّ آخِرَتَهُ أَضَرَّ بِدُنْيَاهُ فَآثِرُوا مَا يَبْقَى عَلَى مَا يَفْنَى
“Whoever loves his worldly life will harm his Hereafter, and whoever loves his Hereafter will harm his worldly life. Thus, prefer what is everlasting over what will vanish.” (Sahih Ibn Hibban #709)
It’s all about making a deliberate conscious choice of what you can strategically afford to “let go”, and what you need to focus your efforts in, where you can add the highest value and the best impact.
I noticed I have to make this “trade-off” choice in multiple different day-to-day circumstances at the workplace and at home. For example, if we’re focusing on being fully present and participative in physical meetings or trainings, then the necessary trade-off is that we aren’t “always on” our laptops to be responding to emails and virtual messages. We don’t get to be that responsive guy who’s always available. The other trade-off: we have to Brace ourselves with potential overwhelming list of unread messages, emails and surprise "urgent" requests that came in when our laptops were left unattended 😂.
Also, Office hours are limited. When you choose to spend time in one area, then the trade-off is that you have less hours in other areas. For example, in my role as a manager in the workplace, I have to juggle multiple different tasks: Setting goals, coaching and mentoring others, measuring performance, attending conferences and seminars to explore new solutions and ideas, engaging clients, exchanging feedback, reviewing and approving your team deliverables, performance reporting with our superiors, getting to know your team, hiring new staff, and your own personal competency development.
It’s the art of juggling between “where should I put more emphasis and priorities”, “what can I afford to miss?”, and “what is best for my team and I in the long term?”
It happens for parenting, too. For example, If we want to allow our children with the freedom of creativity with their toys, or to learn being independent, such as eating by themselves, then in the meantime, we have to learn to accept that the household will be in a complete mess as they try, learn, and make mistakes. And as parents, it's about knowing “when” and “how” to strategize the cleanup afterwards.
It’s okay to be messy. Let them judge. You do you.
Do you struggle with perfectionism in handling multiple responsibilities? What trade-offs do you have to make? How do you decide?
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