Ambition > Time = Anxiety, how do you cope?
One thing I struggle with is always having a multitude of project ideas I want to accomplish, both professionally and hobby, but am faced with the reality of only having so much time I can dedicate to any one thing. I sometimes am left with a feeling of anxiety for not acting on a project, even though I know the practice of focussing on what I have on the go now is best.
Can anyone else relate and how do you cope with this?
My strategy right now is to both write down a description - and any additional ideas that pop up on the topic - in a note taking app, in addition to exercising as regularly as possible. Perhaps I should add meditation to my "must be done" chores to gain those benefits, as I've lost that practice.
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Writing stuff down helps. I have a list TODO with three columns: TODO / Working on (right now) / Nice to Have
Each time I get a wild, but half-hearted idea "It would be cool if I..." but no concrete plan to get there I just toss it onto Nice To Have list.
Most of the stuff in "Nice to Have" gets pruned once initial excitement has blown over, but sometimes if I find enough conviction to follow through I attach some deadline to the idea "e.g. Register for X programme by Y " and toss it onto TODO.
Writing them down is a big one for me. Then I can expunge them from my brain. Sometimes I blog about them because then two things happened: I'm unlikely to go back to it, I given up on it, someone better than me might be working on it... and I might get some SEO to apply to what I'm working on.
The other thing that might help is the reverse bucket list. When you think about all your ideas and project it builds like a checkbox in your head and you want to tick all the boxes. But that's not very useful. Instead, think of days as being checkboxes and you get to tick the day if it was a productive day in which you moved forward. Then, switching around from project to project becomes less valuable than focusing.
Using a blog to get ideas out into the world is an interesting idea, kind of like a "business idea scratchpad" but by publishing it feels like you've 'done' something. I might give that one a try!
I think more than you've done something... it feels like you are done with the idea, because someone better than you might be executing on it, so you might as well focus on the ones you are still keeping in secret, executing in secret.