The Week That Works for Everyone — Except You

And that's the dynamic that I want to talk about today because that really is not a sustainable way of living.

I think that what happens is we start to feel like we have to make big trade-offs, big decisions.

This is where people leave the workforce, right? Or they intentionally limit the size of their family because they're really feeling like this isn't going to work.

There's not going to be enough of me to go around.

And I think there's a couple of kind of factors that get us into this mess.

And I want to talk about what those factors are.

Like, how did we get here? What's the cost of regularly living a week that works for everyone except you? And then what do we do about it, right? How are we going to have a different way, choose a different way forward that is more effective? So let's talk about how we get here first.

I think there are a few things at play that I've thought about.

The first is really our childhood.

I could call this social conditioning, but I'm gonna go all the way back to like family of origin.

Because I bet that when you were growing up, the narrative in your household was like, you can play after your homework is done, your room is cleaned up, like your chores are finished, right? When you're done with your work, air quotes, then you can play.

Most of us grew up in that environment.

Most of us are raising our kids in that environment saying, you know, like, hey, you can go do that fun thing after you've done these things that are required of you.

And I'm not telling you to stop doing that.

I actually think that makes a lot of sense when you are in a child's life and you have, here's the factor, very limited responsibilities.

There are very few things that you actually have to do.

You have to go to school and do your homework and maybe clean up your room or participate in some household chores or taking care of pets, but you don't have a whole lot of demands on your time.

I actually also think that is true maybe as you go into college or enter early adulthood, like limited demands on what people are asking of you.

So it makes sense to be like, yeah, I'm going to get my stuff done and then I'm going to go have some downtime.

Here's the problem.

As life gets increasingly complex, we reach a point where there is no downtime coming.

We are never done.

doing all the things in service to everyone else.

And so we can back ourselves into a corner where there is no window for us to do anything that we want to do, right? In other words, we get to become like an all work and no play person without meaning to because there is this never ending list of things that we could be doing that are productive, right? That feel kind of worky.

So that is the first dynamic.