You Can Do Anything—But Not Everything: A Framework for Sustainable High Performance

“You have to go beyond duality and you also have to go beyond nonduality at the same time. You have to return to duality: that is the final goal. It is like the ox-herding pictures: finally you return to the world, with a big belly and with the ox behind you. That picture, returning to the world, is the final point. So you have duality; then you discover nonduality because of duality; then you transcend both nonduality and duality because of them.”

-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The next frontier of human development is learning what to ignore.

Why?

Because almost 80% of working professionals are burnt out.

But here’s the rub: This does not imply that you abandon ambition. It means that you must set up cost mitigation strategies if you are going to push hard toward your goals.

Performance on all fronts - mental, physical, and emotional - is not free. It costs you time, energy, and resources to go after things.

You can do many things at once, but you can’t do everything at once.

Here’s a map to get you started:

If you are burnt out, you need to stop entertaining too many ideas, thoughts, projects, and commitments. Get centered and discern where you are leaking energy to things that don’t deserve it. Decide where you need to focus first.

The intensity of your recovery needs to match (or exceed) the intensity of your outputs. If you want to do 60-hour weeks, by all means go for it. But make sure you are sleeping, hydrating, and eating like an adult while doing so.

Lastly, integrate infinite thinking into your approach. Infinite games have no end and, by default, are processes you tend to do regularly. Two infinite games that you already believe in are important: Love and health. Each of these is an infinite game and requires a different way of being compared to finite games. Examples of finite games are hitting your monthly sales call quota or finishing your master’s degree. There are clear rules and end outcomes. Here’s the interesting dynamic: When you tend to your infinite games (love and health), your finite games become more fun.