So there was this:

Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends: pick three. https://t.co/ZgTuPHSlBj

— Inc. (@Inc) March 27, 2018

One of the dumber, non-political articlesI have seen this week.

I guess one can say that perspective of the person advocating this nonsense is that  success requires focus, commitment, and intense time management. This is fair. But to suggest that one simply can’t have all five things is somewhat ludicrous.

My biggest problem with this is that it ignores too many possible efficiencies. For example, fitness activities do not have to be done solo. Family members and/or friends can be part of your running, walking, biking, or other fitness activity. Further, fitness is a scalable thing with different levels of participation and effort. I go to the gym with my wife, I play golf with my sons and some of my friends. There is overlap and possible efficiencies.

The fact is, at the moment, I have all five of these things in abundance. And yes, it is hard work, but that’s the nature of a good life. It doesn’t just happen. You work at it, and you use what privilege you have to make it work.

I love my job and what I do. It is surprisingly intense for long periods of time. There are days lately that I feel that I just haven’t ever worked as hard before. But these are good days and nothing to complain about. Plus I have finally learned to go home and NOT work all evening. Unless there is a deadline, the work stuff stops when I leave the office, save for what I consider the requisite effort to maintain a career and profession: ongoing reading, study, and practice. I simply don’t allow those to overtake my evenings or weekends, unless I am having fun or something.

I spend time every evening and weekend with my wife. We have radically different schedules, interests, and abilities, but we make time. After 29 years next week, we are finally learning how to do this somewhat well.

Fitness takes time, especially while I have been in weight-loss mode and working out as if I was actually training for something. I’m not training. At least, I don’t think I am. But there are still a few races I would like to run and last weekend I learned that the nearby state park recently hosted a trail marathon. It would be nice to do another, and nicer still not to do one in the mountains. And as I said earlier, I play golf with friends and this year we are adding hiking into the mix of the activities.

I sleep. Not always do I sleep the full seven or so that I want, but that reflects the fact that I generally like to move slowly in the mornings, so I cut the sleeping just a bit to accommodate that.

Now there are other choices made interweaving these things as they don’t account for all the 168 hours in a week. In fact, there is still a fair amount of slop. I lead a pretty relaxed lifestyle. Our children are grown and gone so I can be more relaxed.

So, what’s my point? That you can have all these things?

Nope.

My point is really that one of the best forms of self-care is to be really critical about any advice you are confronted with. Evaluate the life and lifestyle of person giving advice. Do they live it? Is it consistent? Most importantly, does it appear to lead to the quality of life you want for yourself?

I mean, for all the possible allegories of hell, don’t take my advice if you don’t think my life is working.

Newspapers, magazines, and .com websites exist to make money. No matter what claims they make in the subheading (such as “to help you live a better life”), their first objective is to take money – whether by directly selling something or selling page views for advertisements. As long as this is true, crap lists of what to do, lists of what choices to make (since you clearly can’t have it all), and a bajillion promises to make your life better if you do this one weird thing, will always be around.

However, one thing really is true. There is only so much time in a day, a week, a year. You have to make choices about how to use that time. Those choices will determine if you can have sleep, work, friends, family, and fitness. Of course, the secret to having all five is choosing to do so, and then making the daily choices that allow you to have those things.