Trade-offs and Triumphs 22 by @jennykim
Issue 22: The Ultimate Trade-off - Our Time and Attention - “Who You Are”; Doing Nothing and Happiness; More on the Annual Review or Annual Reflection; Happy New Year and Auld Lang Syne
Hello, friends! Thank you to my 123 subscribers, and welcome to my new subscribers!
Welcome to issue 22!
How was your week? What were your trade-offs and triumphs?
For those who could spend time with friends and family, I hope that you created some wonderful memories together - even when doing nothing.
Finally, this will be the last newsletter for 2020. Thank you for gifting me some of your most precious items: your time and attention.
Speaking of which, how do we decide what deserves our time and attention?
This week we will hit on:
“Who You Are”
Doing Nothing and Happiness
More on the Annual Review or Annual Reflection
Happy New Year and Auld Lang Syne
For a quick oral summary about this newsletter, hit ▶️ below:
“Who You Are”
Who are you
Please tell me who you are
Why are you in front of me
You seem to have been carved into my heart
I close my eyes
And the past is like smoke and clouds and rain
Are you waiting for me
Unwilling to leave
Do any of us know who we are? Or, for that matter, who our loved ones are?
The above translated lyrics are from a song, “Who Are You,” from a Chinese drama, “Inside Man” (局中人). This past weekend, I hopscotched through this 49-episode drama (in my opinion, you can skim through much of it, because the political intrigue rinses and repeats).
It is your usual Chinese drama set in the immediate period post-World War II when the Communists and the Nationalists were dueling for ultimate power on the mainland. Without giving away any spoilers, the story revolves around two brothers and their seemingly different political beliefs, and their complicated relationships, both professionally and personally.
Because when you have several identities in the name of saving China, how could you have anything but complicated relationships?
Perhaps when one has such a goal, any trade-off seems justifiable, including ones that ultimately destroy your soul and identity.
The trade-offs that these characters make within each of their multiple identities without considering the whole struck a chord. These past few days, I have been re-reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift from the Sea.” Her descriptions, published in 1955, about struggling with ever compounding obligations and multiple identities could easily describe us today:
For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication… What a circus act… This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul.
When we set goals and we pursue them, we often do not take out all the pieces and examine them holistically. Instead, we make trade-offs in a vacuum, focused on achieving specific goals that we set. We never stop to question whether that goal makes any sense as we age and our lives evolve.
Like the rotisserie chicken, we set our goals and forget them and the why.
One of Nick Maggiulli’s readers hit at the heart of the matter in response to one of Nick’s most recent “Of Dollars and Data” blog posts:
I’ve been reading your postings for years, but your most recent impelled me to reply.
I did not even begin to invest until I was 30.
Approaching 70, I will run out of time before I run out of money.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda do not matter.
We can only make decisions based on what we know when we make them.
“I will run out of time before I run out of money.”
When we don’t consciously think about the trade-offs we make, it may be too late to know who we are, or even to get to know who our loved ones are.
So who are you today?
And who will you be tomorrow?
And who will you be when time runs out?
Doing Nothing and Happiness
While we all try to figure out who we are, are you happy?
I will confess - I am not that keen into happiness, or the emotional highs and lows of life. I believe in contentment. That is why I try to focus on the long-term picture and try to restrain myself from immediate gratification - i.e., like not eating that piece of cake, and instead focusing on getting my 10,000 steps and some aerobic exercise in daily.
I don’t actively seek happiness or contentment - I try to let small moments come find me.
Or, I do nothing at all towards the “happiness” or “contentment” goal.
Sounds like survey says - 👍
Indeed, the quickest route to so-called happiness may be to do nothing. Actively seeking happiness may contribute to:
Increased feelings of loneliness and disconnection
Failure to appreciate others around you because of an intense self-focus
Feeling like time is slipping away more quickly than it actually is
Instead, we should focus on setting our own standards for what constitutes a meaningful life. Like Patricia Mou, figure out your own definition of success. Like Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, find opportunities in adversity and don’t let someone else define your value.
Or, as Dickie Bush recommends, find your “10 Club” who will motivate and inspire you 👇👇👇:
And finally, embrace your negative emotional reactions to adversity, and remember that without these feelings, you could not understand how to feel happiness either.
It is the contrast that enables us to appreciate what we have.
And help us figure out who we are.
More on the Annual Review or Annual Reflection
Last week, in Trade-offs and Triumphs 21, I mentioned that I would put together a quick thread 🧵 on the “annual review” 👇👇👇:
As I perused through all the different types of annual reviews, I grouped them into three buckets 👇👇👇:
But, over a series of three newsletters, Pranav Mutatkar has created a fourth bucket of “annual review” - the lazy way, or “annual reflection”:
💡 2 Quick Questions You Need to Ask This Week
What would your future self (10-year older version) think about the life you're currently living? How about the 20-year older version? 40-year older?
If you died in perfect health at the end of the next year what would you like your next year to look like?
💡 The 5 End of the Year Questions That Will Transform Your Life
What did my year look like in terms of metrics? (health & mood, personal finance, screentime, routines, etc)
What did I achieve? (Bold the most valuable and feel f**king proud).
What was the 20% that delivered the 80% of my results this year? How can I double down on that 20%?
What were my disappointments? What did I learn?
What was my bottleneck (the answer is almost never time)? How do I address the bottleneck?
💡 5 Steps to Achieve The Best Year of Your Life
Write blue sky what I hope to accomplish. Describe it as vividly as possible (w/ your 5 senses).
Using the bottlenecks from the reflection. Ask: What are the lead dominos to happiness and success?
Define this year's SMART KPIs (ideally 5-10).
Write down: What's the good that I will sacrifice for the great? What will I have to give up (in terms of stories, habits, opportunities mindsets, etc.)?
Create necessary lazy resilient systems to achieve KPIs.
What are you discovering about yourself as you conduct your annual reflection?
Do you know who you are?
And do you know what trade-offs you will make deliberately in 2021?
Happy New Year - wishing everyone a relaxing rest of 2020 and a healthy and prosperous 2021.
The history of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Please leave me your questions or comments in the Comments section below 👇👇👇
You can also DM on Twitter @jennykim or email me at jennykimwop@gmail.com
Be conscious of your trade-offs. Find that trade-off that will lead to triumph this week, no matter how small, and celebrate it.
See you next week in 2021!