Some days are inexplicably frustrating.
Lately, I’ve been marveling in the fact that every thing I want to do in a given day takes up so much time.
It’s that, or I’m simply trying to fit 10lbs of sugar in a 5lb bag, as my Pops likes to say.
And maybe that is the problem: my focus is in so many different places that there is no time left over to focus on the most important thing right now, in this moment.
As I type this, I’m currently cooking dinner (passively, lasagna is in the oven), and I still need to go to the grocery store.
Tomorrow, I know that I need to prepare at least one client report, yet I also have a load of laundry to do.
And it’s not that I’m complaining, because this is life…however, as I’ve packed more personal things into my day-to-day, I’ve realized that there really isn’t much time available to waste.
There is literally something important I can be doing at every waking moment of the day.
Yet I still find myself getting sucked into my phone, or obsessing over YNAB graphs, browsing my favorite reddit subs, or going down YouTube wormholes.
Distractions fly from every direction, and this is on top of obligations that are already smacking us in the face.
What this means to me is that every thing we do throughout a typical day has a very high opportunity cost.
Why?
Because there will simply never be enough time for us to do everything we want to do in a day.
As such, each decision we make to do one thing is taking away time to do the other thing. And with a lot of “things” going on, there is not a lot of time left over.
This had me thinking…
How can I kill more birds with one stone (figuratively speaking, of course)?
I’m not talking about multi-tasking per se, more like “habit stacking”.
So instead of just finding a park bench to meditate, why not bring my lunch, a book, and my travel guitar along with me?
I could basically knock out 3 good habits (meditation, guitar, reading) and one necessity (eating) in about an hour.
We can always be more efficient, and to me, this seems like a good potential solution to my struggle to meet all of my daily goals.
Let’s call it “minimizing opportunity cost with habit stacking”.
We’ll see if it makes just as much sense in practice as it does in theory.