I no longer value maximising my optionality

“What can I do?” vs. “What must be done?”

Spending six months averaging ~17hrs a week of training

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Sacrifice is something I feel privileged to not have had too much experience with. Outside what I consider to be the normal rhythms of life – school, work, and social things – I spent my recreational time fairly liberally. I often felt that I had a lot of it, even when the intensity of everything else ramped up. If I were being critical about why it always felt like that, I would say it was because I didn’t really have any hobbies. There were no pursuits that I spent time with any regularity –– unless trawling through the internet counts, though I wouldn’t personally.

Over the last year, I have discovered various things that I enjoy doing, things that I would call hobbies or pastimes. Each of which give me a lot of purpose and meaning to how I spend my days. In the last month, however, I have reached a tipping point where I have become time-poor with respect to the things I want to do in a given day. I can’t say I have felt this before. When I could do anything, and had nothing specific I felt compelled to do, time seemed limitless. Now that I have committed to some meaningful pursuits, time has made her presence felt.

Up until this year, my mindset had always been to maximise optionality. Perhaps that is why I never really had any hobbies to begin with, picking and sticking with something is a step towards reducing my optionality.

As I wrote this, I had a mind-blown moment.

Now that I have found things that have give me immense joy to my dreary existence, I cannot see myself living in a world where I were to give them up in favour of optionality. Is this a sign a maturation? Mihir Desai works in a world where everyone around him is maximising their optionality, and he certainly seems to agree.

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