You Can Do Anything You Want, But You Can’t Do Everything

“You can do anything, but not everything.”
– David Allen

I’ve heard, and felt, that as time passes and we grow older, the days and years move faster and faster. I would look up and a week, a month, a year had gone by. In the back of my mind, I would think about what I had been able to accomplish, and also the things I still had not gotten around to yet.

Looking to “make” more time, I reached for the tools I’ve discussed before: better scheduling, better systems, and better use of the in-between moments.

This led to some amusing “optimizations”: combining Costco trips with seeing friends, listening to podcasts during cardio, and watching shows at double speed.

Those little optimizations can be satisfying, and sometimes they help, but they are mostly chipping away at the edges. They might buy back a couple hours in a week. A single real choice, deciding not to do something, can sometimes give back ten.

Busyness And Prioritization

As I thought about that tension, I started noticing the same idea in different places: busyness as status, busyness as culture, and the practical limits of a calendar.

• Researchers Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan have written about busyness as a kind of status symbol. The signal is not just “I have a lot to do,” it is also “I am in demand.” If my calendar is packed and people are waiting on me, it can look like competence, ambition, and scarcity.
• Ann Burnett, a communication professor who studied decades of family holiday letters, noticed that the letters increasingly described life as “hectic,” “whirlwind,” “crazy,” and “on the run.” Even Christmas letters, which used to be more about blessings or milestones, started to become little annual reports of how packed the year had been.
• Jamie Dimon, while talking about work-life balance, once gave advice that was surprisingly plain: stop watching every football game, stop spending both weekend days playing golf, and do something with your kids. Even with extraordinary resources, the weekend still has to be prioritized.

What I Want To Make Room For

Rather than trying to do absolutely everything, I think it helps to stop every so often and ask what I actually want to make room for. Deep relationships, meaningful work, my health, personal projects, and the life experiences that matter most on my bucket list are not going to happen by accident. They happen because I make room for them, and because I let some other things go.

There is no version of this where I get every possible life. There is only the life I keep making through the choices I repeat.

You can have anything you want – you just can’t have everything.