Time and Attention Are Not The Same

There are so many times in life when knowing what to do is simple but doing it is much more complicated. People tell you to eat fewer calories or save more money, things that don’t sound very complex on paper, but are quite difficult to actually implement. One thing I’ve realized is that just like trying something new takes tremendous energy, the things that really matter to you also require our full brain power. Time and attention are not the same resource. So although it’s a great strategy to block off time for the things you care about most, it’s a little more nuanced than that. You need to block off high brain power time for high brain power activities. A lot of times as parents we try to get things done in that little sliver of time after our kids go to sleep. But that end-of-the-day brain power is not the brain power you want to work on something special to you. The question becomes, when in your natural rhythm do you have the most brain power? From there you can schedule your most cognitively demanding tasks during that time. Then the less cognitively demanding tasks can go after the kids are asleep.