Today’s quote is:
“You can do anything, but not everything.” -David Allen
This idea has been on my mind a lot lately. I think it is because I have a fourth child and anytime you add a child to your life, you add another responsibility that takes up a lot of time. Any time you add a responsibility that takes up a lot of time, you have to find that time from somewhere. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of time I spent idle, so that time has to come from something I was doing that I wanted to be doing and felt I needed to be doing.
Where do you take it? What has to give? Do you drop something all together or do you give a little less to multiple things and hope they all work out?
I don’t have the answers. I have the basics–the “whys”–and that is an important place to start. Here are some posts I have written on the whys of this dilemma:
- A Good Woman
- Slow the Pace
- 10 Ways to Save Your Sanity
- Good Sacrifice vs. Foolish Sacrifice
- It’s A Journey, Not A Destination
- Motherhood: Some Uplifting Words (again)
- Increasing Our Capacity
I think an important first step is accepting that you cannot do everything. And that is so hard! The problem is, like this quote says, you can do anything. You can! Anything you want to do, you can do it. And because of that, you can want to do everything! You can want to be an excellent cook, impressive cleaner, fun mom, wise mom, gardener extraordinaire, fitness guru, on-time scrapbooker, splendid seamstress, PTA president, queen of service, and one of those people who actually does 1% of what she pins on Pinterest…But you can’t do everything. You can’t do it all. You just don’t have time for it.
And so you have to figure out what the best things are for you to be doing and start there. You can add in other things if there is time after the best and most important things (but of course it seems like there isn’t!). And so I love this quote.
You can do anything.
But you can’t do everything.
So pick what your anythings are and sit back and enjoy those who choose the other anythings to focus on.
And as a side note, this quote also applies nicely to the activities our children participate in. We all have talented children who have a whole future ahead of them. They have the ability to do anything! They have so many options and opportunities! But they can’t do everything, either.
