I heard a theory from a friend today. She suggested that a person’s productive ability is like a cup. I am paraphrasing here, but the idea is that we fill ourselves up to a certain level. Later, when we shed responsibilities, we cannot shed the level of production, so we pour more into everything we are still doing until we hit the rim. The thing is, certain people have a hard time ever emptying that cup. They tend to fill their time up with tasks or with depth on a particular task, because they don’t know how to do anything else.
Not surprisingly, I’m the guy who doesn’t know how to do anything else. It is a good thing, sort of. It means that when I reduce the number of tasks on my plate it increases the depth allotted to each given task. Sort of. That part varies from person to person. I’m the person who has spent so long juggling multiple tasks that it is difficult to reduce and enrich. I find that in the quiet moments, my mind devolves into chaos. I am so used to doing so much that when I have a moment to think about what I am supposed to do next, I get paralyzed thinking about how many things I could be doing next, and how many things I want to do overall.
This sort of thinking led me down the road to psychological organization. I know that the way to be successful is to have a mental construction of that success. What does it look like? What is important? What needs to be done by when? Again, I ain’t there. At least I know where there is.