live life
We’ll have to file this one under “Rules I wish I broke before I left Pittsburgh.” What’s life without a few risky chances, after all? I still wished we’d jumped the fence at Schenley and skated around in the dark.
A procrastinating coworker of mine stopped by my cube the other day and said that he was bored with his Ferrari. “Really,” I said, “what are you going to do now?” “I think I’m going to get into watches,” he said. “Oh, those fancy watches you were talking about before? Is that going to keep you interested?” “Probably not,” he answered.
He proceeded to tell me that there are three things that make up life (and no, expensive watches aren’t one of them) — family, career, and your love interest. Not everyone can find all three happy and satisfying, but you should at least strive for two, especially if one of those things is already messed up. “Now if two of those things aren’t too good, you have a lot of work to do,” he said. What about three? I thought worriedly as he walked away. I wanted to run after him and pose the question, but alas, he was no sage, just a guy who has a car seat on wheels in his office that he uses as a computer chair.
Maybe the key is working on one thing at a time. I don’t actually believe people are capable of multitasking, despite what bosses and psychologists say. Once, in a job interview, I answered “I get very focused on one project and don’t put as much effort into concurrent projects,” to the question “What is one of your weaknesses?” The interviewer quickly tried to clarify. “Oh, so you can’t multitask?” “That’s not what I said,” I snapped. I wanted to say “You can’t multitask either,” but in the interest of getting the job, I kept my mouth shut.
We choose to put effort into things that are important to us, and we choose to put less effort into other aspects of our lives. Sometimes I think we choose to focus feverishly on two out of the three, not because it’s less important, but simply because the third isn’t working out and we don’t know what to do about it.
