Balancing on a surfboard

A couple months ago, I went a few weeks without writing a blog post.

Not because I decided to stop. Writing needs mornings for me, and the mornings just went away. Tuesday I slept badly. Wednesday a cat had a vet appointment. Friday I woke up early to monitor an important day for a work client. Blink and a week has passed by. Then two.

Look: it happens. It’s fine.

I also did strength training once instead of three times last week. And a few weeks ago, I read for 2 hours instead of 13.

We have all sometimes thought “Damn, I’m behind” or “This isn’t working” or “Why can’t I get it together?” I think most of us do it virtually every day.

It’s fine.

Believe me.

The stock market of our life portfolio

Whether we’re a company, a team, a family, a couple, a person, we’re all trying to do the same thing: use scarce resources to take care of what we value.

A company has money, people, and time, and it values customers and growth. A family has evenings, weekends, and whatever energy is left after work, and it values the kids being happy, the marriage being good, and the house not falling apart. You have 105 hours a week and a short list of your own, and so do I.

But we mistake ourselves if we think doing well means everything is going smoothly at all times: our kids are never in any trouble, our health is always pristine, plenty of money in the bank and a big smile on our faces every single day.

In practice, “doing well” looks more like a stock market portfolio: daily volatility, some big dips sometimes, but trending up over the long term.

It means some days you’ll look at things and say “geez, that’s bad” because it’s true: it is bad.

But it’s just how doing well works in practice.

It's never perfect, perfect, perfect, done

When you “figure it out,” life won’t be a margarine commercial; not unless you’re really undershooting, that is.

In practice, life is a constant constraint allocation problem. Today, more gold goes here. Next week, more gold goes there, and no gold goes here. Again. Life moves, you move with it.

There’s no final state where you just admire the spreadsheet.

Balance feels a lot more like balancing on a surfboard than like balancing a checkbook.

On a surfboard, you're never still. You shift weight constantly, and not always because you decided to. You’re just trying to surf well at best and not fall into the water at worst.

Not falling into the water is good. But we all fall into the water sometimes, and that’s fine too.

You know how many times the best surfers fell into the water? Many, many times. And yet, they still became the best surfers.

Trust me. It’s fine.

So failing is good?

That’s not to say failure is good. It’s not to say that if you want your kids to be happy and they’re miserable, it’s all okay and will work itself out in the end. In fact, it most likely won’t.

What I’m saying is that on the short term, doing well and failing can look a lot alike.

Racers, fighters, tennis players, soccer teams.. most of them struggle through challenges on the way to success in ways that aren’t that different from their losing opposition.

In fact, when things look really smooth for a sports player, what do we think? They’re not trying hard enough. They’re not focused and will be caught by surprise. They’ll lose due to something silly.

So no, winning doesn’t look like no struggle. Winning is just about trending up, no matter what “winning” means to you: Happy family, a fine job, good health, etc.

So the question is less “did today feel like a win?”

and more “am I still on the right path?”

Happy routines

I call happy routines the ones you do without much trouble.

You know how it’s hard for some people to do some things but easy for others to do the same thing? Sleeping early. Going for a run. Eating just enough. Practicing the piano.

So much of our routines depend on consistency, and consistency can be much improved when it’s easy for us to do things.

We underestimate the “happy” in our routines. There’s nothing we love 100% of the time. But happy is just that thing that is always nice to do, you feel good about it, be it taking a walk, cooking, playing video games with your kid, hosting your friends.

Also, it can be pretty hard to live a life of every day doing what doesn’t make us happy at all, right? So try to align happy things with things that help you invest in what you care about.

You won’t do what makes you happy all of the time. Nobody does. Not even kids. Why have that expectation?

Be content to do the things that make you happy some of the time.

And make sure that you do.

Embracing happy times

I love cats. They get on my nerves sometimes: meowing for the special food (again), jumping in front of the camera during an important meeting or presentation, peeing where they shouldn’t and waking me up when they can’t wait until the morning to work out their cat disagreement.

But it’s so good to write an article with a cat in between my arms. To pet a cat while AI writes my code. To have a cat on each side of my legs when I’m playing video games, or on top of me when I’m sleeping in bed.

Besides: I have virtually infinite images for my articles.

So have pets. Play with your kids. Have fun with your friends. The day-to-day will stress you out no matter how well you allocate your resources because your resources are limited and life’s troubles are just seemingly unlimited.

Follow the Epicurean advice of 2,300 years ago instead of the business advice of 30 years ago to never eat alone:

In fact, the only pleasures of the table celebrated by Epicurus are those of conversation. One should never, the Epicurean creed implies, eat alone. Friendship was not only an Epicurean good in itself, it delivered real pragmatic benefits, for friends united in common purpose become allies in times of need.

Slattery, Luke. Reclaiming Epicurus. Kindle Edition.

Filling life with happy routines will help you be consistently happy, while consistently taking care of that which you value.

What if things go wrong?

Not if. When. You mean to ask “What about WHEN things go wrong.”

Life will go wrong. It’s life. It goes right. And then it goes wrong.

In life, there are no guarantees.

So how to deal with the bad times? The same way you deal with the good times: embrace them and understand that this too will pass.

And remember you can make things easier on yourself when things do go wrong: Do your checkups. Take care of your health. Save some money. Call your mom.

Make those into happy routines, and keep moving forward.

Navigate the winters like you navigate summer: knowing the next season is just around the corner, and there’s no such thing as mild weather all year long.

Don’t wish the weather was different. Just get an umbrella.

And don’t worry about getting a little wet.

It’s fine.

Just keep surfing, and enjoy the sea.