The Infinitely Finite

The harshest reality of life is that we have a finite life yet infinite tasks to do. 

Or, if you are Chris Williamson - you find this mortally hilarious - which I can’t help but exhale a bit harder than usual through my nose at. You know what I’m talking about. 

This reality is honestly a bit of a slap in the face. The reality that our lives are eventually going to come to an end and the likelihood of you not being able to accomplish everything is a bit depressing. 

I have so much I want to do. First and foremost, we have a list of dog breeds that we would like to have in our lifetime. I mean, a LIST. I want to be a polyglot (a person fluent in numerous languages) so I can communicate to people in their native tongues when I travel. I want to have a profound impact on as many people as I can. I want to build successful companies just so I know what I am capable of. I want to travel the world. I want to reshape how we treat pets within America. I wanted to get good at skateboarding until I realized that being 6’9” and a skateboard slingshotting you onto your elbow is a recipe for a lot of pain. Part of me wants to do a challenge to see if I can go pro in a sport because, why not? I want to get jacked. I want to code programs. I want to know how to hack stuff - you know, to flex and stuff. I want to realize my potential. 

This is by no means an all encompassing list but that is a lifetime's worth of activities, many of them limited by my health and well-being which means I inherently won’t be able to achieve all of them. Worse yet, the more I dive into the activities, the more potential interests I find. 

You likely have a long list of interests and things that you would like to accomplish in your life as well. Maybe you resonate with my list, maybe you hate it and can’t believe how materialistic it was. 

Regardless, when we have many desires in life, we know in the back of our minds that we won’t be able to explore them all. If you want to accomplish any of them, you will have to make them the largest priority. 

By prioritizing, you are acknowledging what is important to you and what will make the largest impact on your life. You are also acknowledging that the closer to the bottom of the list you go, the less likely you are to cross that goal or desire off the list. 

Worse yet, if you think like me, you are left wondering, what if the thing that I am really good at or the thing that I am meant to do is something that I simply haven’t gotten the exposure to yet and I am now guaranteeing that I will never accomplish that?

Now that is a harsh reality. 

But, there is no way to know. 

So it is better for you to assume that the interests that you have had that have resurfaced in your life redundantly are likely the interests that are best for you to prioritize. 

That is what I am doing write now. That’s a pun - not a spelling error btw. 

I’m not sure that I’ll ever track down the book, but when I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an author. 

I loved how you can enter another world simply with the consumption of another’s thoughts put to paper. This lent to my development of my writing skills from elementary school through college and has once again resurfaced through the tremendous amount of writing that I am constantly doing. 

I love adding my voice and sharing my thoughts and the idea that you are reading this and resonating with my line of thinking fills me with… fulfillment? I’m not sure the feeling. It’s quite different and I haven’t pondered it but if I can make just you be more intentional with life, I know I am doing what I should be. 

YouTube has also been a recurring thread. I’m not sure what it is about sharing content with others, but I have always enjoyed it. 

I consumed an enormous amount of YouTube in my youth - mostly music videos back in the day but it periodically pops back into my life. 

I have also periodically created on YouTube. 

In middle school, I posted videos of my fish tanks. In high school, videos of my buddy and I lighting off model rockets by our high school. Over the last year, I produced some tech reviews but feared that I would get trapped in that niche forever at 300 subscribers and paused. 

Now, it’s back and revamped and mirroring more of the content that I am creating here. I want to help people like you and me reflect. To get out of their own way and reach their potential. 

Lastly, my business thread. I have always longed to create a business. In middle school, I learned how to jailbreak iPods and charged people $5 to jailbreak theirs. I was realin’ it in - I made like….  $15. 

I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and similar books to learn more about managing money and how to get out of the rat race… 

I got interest in personal finance and running my own firm, which took me down the path leading to what I am currently doing for my profession. 

But I have always had a thought, gnawing at me. 

I don’t like being dependent on others. I never have. I don’t like not being in control of my life. 

So, I combined the recurrent threads. 

I have a business idea but have no idea what it will result in or what to expect from it. 

But I do know that if I had kept down the path I was going down, I’d be fluent in Japanese and work in the same job for the same company forever and that just doesn’t resonate with the person I want to be. 

While I hadn’t summarized the concept of life’s trade-offs so succinctly, this realization showed me that I was prioritizing the wrong goals and that the three threads of writing, YouTube, and business could act as a catalyst to achieving many of my goals with the potential to make the most sacrifices up front but the least amount of sacrifice long term. 

Depending on who you are and what you want out of life, this may or may not resonate with you. But I challenge you to really hold the fleeting nature of life closely. 

Embrace the trade-offs and understand that we are all going to get to our deathbeds with regrets in the form of tasks not checked off.

Use that as fuel to sort out your priorities and determine what you absolutely must check off before you die.

Depending on the task, it may be a lifetime endeavor. You may have to make small steps towards achieving what you want out of life but small steps are better than no steps as they slowly move you towards where you want to be. 

What this looks like for me is developing discipline through bodybuilding and changing my diet, committing to making blog posts daily with an emphasis on refining my storytelling and style, and creating videos daily - currently focusing on my articulation and adding value for the audience - refining with each video that I make. 

I believe that the sum of these small steps taken over the next few years will ultimately allow me to have an impact and progress me in the right direction to building my company - in the form of an application over the next five years or so. 

I have no delusions that this will be easy. I am excited for the challenge, and happy that I have chosen to prioritize the tasks that I believe will propel me in the right direction for achieving my potential. 

I know that this pursuit will leave some of my infinite tasks unaccomplished in my finite life but these feel like the right tasks to prioritize. 

That leaves me with a larger question. What are the tasks that you need to prioritize so you minimize the amount of regret that you experience when given the opportunity to reflect on your finite, human life? What are the small steps that you can take today to start working on them?