Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash
In the past year, I made many things happen.
But at the same time, I was running away from life. I was always staying busy. Hustling, as they say.
Every dead moment was spent creating, building an audience and checking in on Twitter.
I made free products, created ebooks, wrote newsletters, produced a podcast, build a few websites, tweeted on Twitter, posted on Instagram, shared things on Medium. I started and stopped many things, like this website, for example.
To some, all these efforts may look like success. I went from 55 followers to almost 2.2k on Twitter. I also made $500 in online sales.
And there was some other real success: I talked to incredible people and got better freelancing jobs.
But actually, this year was a bit of a failure.
Why?
Because I didn’t find time to read what I wanted to read. I didn’t have time for sports or meditation. Whenever I was with my daughter, I felt like I had to get back to work.
I always felt like I needed to do more. Influence more, build more, create more, hustle more.
More, more, more.
Well, I got more weight because I didn’t do sports and didn’t have time to eat healthily…
And when I found time to relax, it was time spent relaxing with family. I felt guilty for always being away so I always rested with them.
This means I rarely rested alone and hence rarely rested well.
And if I did have an empty moment in which all my projects were “finished” and all my notifications “checked”, I had to read a book for my podcast.
No, it wasn’t a success.
I worked hard to get passive income, hoping to enjoy life later. So I can travel later. So I can relax later. So I can read all the books I want to read later.
But why do something at the cost of my current life? There’s little time to relax. I’m always comparing. And there’s no time to do what I want to do:
Read, run, relate, relax.
It always reminds me of the businessman and fisherman, a story by Coelho.
Since we stopped writing on Top Three Guide, more people started discovering our advice. A few hundred people find us via their search engine now.
This makes me want to pick this project back up. But maybe it’s another false priority?
I should probably write a top 3 guide about priority ;)