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What Is 'The Necessity of Choice'?

• You will always have too much to do: you must choose what to do, and what to leave undone.
• It's best to make conscious Trade-offs between things you want in a deliberate, informed way.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'The Necessity of Choice'

We live in a world of Trade-offs: you will always have competing demands for your time, Attention, and energy. You can learn to use your limited resources in smarter ways, but in the end, you are responsible for deciding what to do and what to drop.

There is no magic formula or perfect system that will allow you to accomplish everything you've ever wanted to accomplish without effort, without stress, without hardship, and without cost.

Once you fully accept the reality that your time, energy, Attention, and financial resources are limited, that you are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and that you always retain the responsibility to think and act for yourself, you’re in a good position to make consistent progress toward Goals that are important and meaningful to you.

Most time management and productivity questions boil down to “How can I complete too much work in not enough time, with limited energy?” The Necessity of Choice is a useful way of thinking about this fundamental challenge: it’s best to make personal Trade-offs in a conscious and deliberate manner.

You will always have too much to do. There will always be tasks left undone. If success means “getting everything done,” you’re in for a lifetime of stress and unsatisfying work. Worse: if getting everything done is a prerequisite for rest and recovery, you’re building a prison of your own making.

You always have to choose what to do and what to leave undone: it's a fundamental feature of reality, not something that you can hack in any meaningful way. Reality will force choices upon you by virtue of living in a finite universe. If you don’t make informed and clear Decisions about what to do and what to avoid, important parts of your life will be determined by chance and circumstance.

The best strategy is to choose: to make conscious Trade-offs between things you want in a deliberate, informed way. Choose what you want most and let go of everything that doesn’t make the grade.

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"O! that a man might know / The end of this day’s business, ere it come; / But it sufficeth that the day will end / And then the end is known."

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

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