One of the big lies of our age is the idea that “you can have it all.” You can’t. No way. With the number of options and choices, this lie becomes more and more damaging as we try to have it all and fail miserably.

We talk about life-work balance and yet expect to spend all our time with family while the boss wants us to spend all our time at work. We talk about having our priorities right, yet we have twenty top priority things to do.

You can’t have it all. However, you can have all the things that are truly important to you, but that means you have to eliminate all the other things that are just distractions.

1. Work On What’s Important

To spend your time on the most important things, start asking yourself questions like “Is this the most important thing I should be doing right now?” or “Is this the best use of my time and resources right now?” or “Is this how I can bring the most value right now?”

If the answer is negative, you should reevaluate whether you should do what you are doing. By working on something that is not the most important thing for you, you are not working on what truly matters to you.

If I come to you with a request, you should ask yourself the same questions, and again, if you can’t answer positively, you should politely refuse my request or redirect me to someone else who can help me. However, that doesn’t mean you should become selfish. You should consider that maybe my request is extremely important to me, and our relationship matters to you. Therefore helping me can be the most important thing to you. It is all about priorities and about what you want from life.

2. You Can’t Have Ten Priorities

If you feel you have ten priorities, ask yourself, “Knowing that I can’t have it all and can’t achieve all the priorities without burning myself out, what is the one thing that, when focused on, will bring the most valuable results?” That is your true priority. And that is what you focus on, even if it means some of the other things won’t get done.

If you don’t make this hard choice yourself, someone is going to make it for you. Your boss, your kids, your customers, will keep creating crisis after crisis, and that will dictate your priorities.

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” – John Maxwell

Learn to listen, watch, explore, question, and think about everything, with one goal in mind. Figure out what is essential and what is not. Figure out what deserves your focus and effort and what doesn’t. And then drop all the trivial things that are leading you astray from your life mission.

3. Priority Means “One”

The word priority is singular. It means one thing. For centuries it represented the very first thing. In the twentieth century turned it into plural. Now we have many priorities. We believe by making more things our priority, we somehow manage to do them. But you can’t cheat nature. You can’t have multiple first things.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – Stephen R. Covey

4. You Have Plenty Of Time

“I don’t have time for it” is the most common excuse of people who either don’t have their priorities straight or who don’t want it bad enough. If something is truly important to you, you will find the time. You may need to stop doing something else, but that is okay if the thing you want to start is more important. It is all about priorities. If you keep making excuses, why not pursue your dreams, they will never come true.

5. Work Hard On The Right Things

I subscribe to the notion that hard work is essential for a satisfying life. You won’t get much satisfaction and meaning from a life that comes easy. However, hard work makes sense only when working on the right things and keeping in mind your own well-being. Consider the character of Boxer the horse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. His solution to every problem is “I will work harder,” which ultimately burns him out. Not to mention the ultimate negative effect it has on the problems on the farm.

6. Start With What’s Important At The Moment

When you have too many things to do, start with those truly important at this very moment. It’s not about urgency or long-term plans. It is about now and here. Greg McKeown notes this in Essentialism. He realized “that until I knew what was important right now, what was important right now was to figure out what was important right now.”

7. Make A Routine Of Uncluttering Your Life

McKeown compares figuring out what is important to go through your wardrobe. He suggests a three-step approach.

First, you explore and evaluate what clothes you have, but you don’t ask the traditional “Is there a chance I may need this one day?” and instead ask questions based on your values and priorities. “Do I wear this regularly?” “Do I love this?” “Do I look great in it?”

Then you eliminate the nonessentials. There are certainly some clothes that you will keep without question. Then there are things you depart with without a second thought. And then there is a pile of things you should probably get rid of, but you have doubts. You may feel that since it cost you money, you shouldn’t just give it away. It is human nature to be attached to things we own. But with that, you would never get rid of anything, so the question to ask is, “If I didn’t own it already, would I spend my hard-earned cash on it now?” If the answer is “no,” then get rid of it.

Once you eliminate the nonessentials, you need to make it a regular habit to review and remove. It means creating a routine, knowing where to donate the things you don’t need, and scheduling a time to do it.

You can do the very same thing with activities and tasks you spend your time on. Don’t be afraid to stop doing things that won’t get you closer to your life mission. Quitting is fine when you stop working on distractions and start working on what truly matters.

8. Stop Saying Yes To Everything

The consumer society values more. We want more money, more stuff, more of everything. Yet, it doesn’t necessarily make our lives better.

Life is not about having more things or doing more stuff, but rather having the essential things and getting the important things done. You have limited resources, time, and energy, and it should be your goal to use them as wisely as possible.

Replace the hoarding attitude of “I have to” and “everything is a priority” with “I choose to,” “I do only what truly matters, so what are the tradeoffs?” It will lead you to say “yes” to fewer activities that are not important. It will build your saying-no muscle, and your life won’t feel so crazy busy. By saying “no” to things that don’t matter to you, you have more time for the essentials in life. You feel more in control, carefully choose what you spend your time on, get the essential things done, and experience more joy.

Why “You Can Have It All” Is Holding You Back

By saying “yes” to everything, you are not prioritizing and choosing what’s important. However, that doesn’t mean you are not working on what matters. You are simply working on what matters to someone else. By saying “yes” to everyone and everything, you give control of your life to someone else.

Figure out what is truly important to you, understand that you can have only one priority, and then put most of your efforts into achieving it. Work hard on the right things, regularly unclutter your life, and you will take control of your own future.

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What is your take on the topic? How many priorities do you have in your life? Do you spend you time and effort on what is truly important to you? What is your single most important priority? Do you believe you can “have it all?”

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