Why Life Seems Harder The More Competent You Become?
Thinking back on my life from an early age I lose count of the number of times I was given advice that revolved around ‘time’ as a finite and valuable resource to use wisely, but as a young man I rejected the idea. Not on grounds of its factual accuracy, because I did accept that there was a limited amount of it and that it had value. However, I disagreed with the tone of urgency and significance with which it was always told. This was simply because up to that point my personal experience was that time really wasn’t as scarce as everyone made out. In fact, it was a resource seemingly in over-abundance.
As a young man in my last few years of school I felt like I had a strong grip on my life. I was happy and fit doing great academically, socially and domestically; and yet at the end of each day I still had hours to throw at whatever entertaining and meaningless activity I wanted to do. Time was seemingly in overabundance because from my perspective I was excelling at everything I was meant to, and still had time to spare afterwards. Only a few years later, this is not the case at all….
Now, I’m not as fit as I used to be and really struggle to find the time to exercise. I still perform well academically, but I don’t spend as much time as I’d like with my current friends or family, and certainly don’t make enough time to maintain my existing relationship with old friends. So, what the hell happened?
Well, I didn’t get dumber or less mature, in fact I’d argue I’ve only gotten more capable as the years have gone by and my life experience has accumulated. So where is the sense in this seemingly paradoxical relationship between an increase in general competency and a decrease in competency at balancing your life as time goes on?
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle: Responsibility
Particularly as one transitions from a teenager into an adult and start to gain real independence, you also gain a number of responsibilities. This only makes sense because inherently by gaining independence you’re doing more for yourself, which comes in the form of responsibilities. Some of these are significant whilst others not so much, but what they all have in common is that they all consume your time.
I want to make the side comment here that I’m seemingly painting a very negative picture of growing up, but independence comes with a host of incredible things; we seek it out from a young age because of all the benefits. But I’m going to ignore this in this deep dive into the increase difficulty of balancing your life as one matures.
Now that I’m an adult I could not agree more with what I was told so many times growing up, time is certainly my most valuable resource. I really do view time as a very limited resource that every day I have to distribute as effectively and meaningfully as possible to both, maintain all the elements in my life I value, and to move towards my greater goals. But why has this become more difficult as I’ve grown older and more competent?
I believe there’s two main reasons. Firstly, some of the most important elements of my life became more difficult to maintain, and therefore ate up a greater proportion of my time. For example, excelling academically at a top university or in working life, is much harder/time consuming than excelling academically at school. The time-consuming task of maintain deep and meaningful relationships also extended out from only friends and family, and now encompasses a romantic partner; an incredible element of my life that is one of my primary sources of happiness, but very time consuming.
Secondly, school used to do it all. It’s a place I had to work and exercise because of scheduled lessons I have to go to, and a place I spend all day with my closest friends. Work, exercise and an extensive social life all in an average working day. And when it came to the end of the day, I lived at home; so, yet again I had to expend no effort to spend time with family. The trinity of the most important things to balance in life in order to be happy, and as a kid it was all seamlessly built into my schedule. It didn’t take an ounce of willpower or expended effort to spend my time on the things that mattered to me most because it was all scheduled by someone else (the school) so that each element was right in front of me every day and week. But I couldn’t choose not to do it. I had no independence.
Now as an adult I’m personally responsible for each and every element in my life, there no one above me using an optimised schedule to plan my day for me in conjunction with others. Now I’m an independent person with the full responsibility of balancing every element of my life myself.
So here is an outline for the challenge I face to date, and that I anticipate many others do to. I seek to live a happy life, but this involves investing almost all my time into my work, my friends, my family, my romantic partner and my health. I’ve found that to be the bare minimum to be happy, because if I were to neglect one of these elements it would take a toll on my overall happiness. But that leaves me at an imposition, because there are plenty of other things I want to invest my time into. I’m an ambitious person that loves taking on projects (this blog is a great example), but where do I find the time if I have to expend it all on the bare minimum to be happy? As a matter of fact, I’m currently investing time that I should be using to revise for exams that are right around the corner for this blog. I can’t even find the spare time to do this.
If you’re looking for the answer to this conundrum of balancing all the elements in your life that matter, I don’t have any definitive answer. However, I leave you with this piece of advice. With this new perspective of time as a finite and valuable resource, are you truly spending the appropriate time on the things that matter to you? I encourage you to reflect on your priorities and ask yourself if how you spend your time really align with them.
Thank you for reading. I hope you gained some kind of insight from this. If you did and want to see more, give me a follow. This is a topic I find thoroughly interesting and I’m sure I’ll touch on again.
Have a fantastic remainder of your day.
