There's Usually Enough Time

It’s crazy to say, but I feel like I’m running out of time in the second semester of my senior year. Between school and work almost every day, I’m left with far less time to pursue side quests or hang out with my friends than I had planned for. Don’t get me wrong—working is super fun—but the scarcity of time has never felt more real to me.

And this is surprising to me. I used to feel like saying you have “no time” was just an excuse that means you didn’t care enough about something, which it probably is. If I really cared, I would’ve spent an extra hour on that project instead of listening to music. And most of the time, I trust myself to make this value judgement correctly. But when I’m tired, the bar for motivation rises exponentially, and something I could’ve done a few hours ago is almost impossible to do now. I almost always have enough time, just not enough motivation.

The most obvious solution to this is removing “agentic” choices from these things, partially outsourcing this motivation to give you more mental capacity to actually work. Strict deadlines and regular classes are probably the best ways to do this. But even small things help, like working in the same room as my sister so we can hold each other accountable.

Ultimately, the point I’m trying to make is that if you feel like you’re running out of time, this may implicitly mean that the things you’re currently doing feel more important than the things you want to be doing. And resolving that dissonance between your mental priorities and what actually happens is crucial. Setting up systems to implement your mental list of priorities, like taking classes or studying in the library, makes it easier to compartmentalize everything and execute.

Inevitably, time is limited, and the trade-offs are hard to make. We obviously can’t get to everything, and maybe it is valuable to watch that movie instead of working for a few extra hours. But it's much better to explicitly cut something than to not get to it because you’re tired or have an unforeseen doom-scrolling session. And creating systems can help with that.

At any given point, there are so many things we want to do, and what we actually complete depends on how well our systems align with what we want. I don’t really know what form these systems will take for me yet, but I do have a few ideas.