We all have multiple roles in life we’d like to play. And limited time/attention/energy. So we look back on our time and ask “was I the person I want to be in t

We all have multiple roles in life we’d like to play. And limited time/attention/energy. So we look back on our time and ask “was I the person I want to be in that moment?” And hear our intuition sigh “no...”. But we were. In that moment reading an article on your phone, you were the well-informed citizen living the life of the mind, which is something you aspire* to be. But you couldn’t simultaneously be the caring father. And the regret of that moment stings more sharply than the satisfaction of thinking about the article you read. One theory I have for how to be more focused: narrow or combine your set of things you aspire to. This is hard. If you aspire to be both a caring father and a moderately-skilled hobby carpenter, you might find your daughter is interested neither in woodworking or in having a treehouse. And so in any given hour, you must choose. (* assumption I’m making about you just so I can write less abstractly)