Last week, I shared 18 reflections from the past year for my birthday. A few felt worth a deeper dive, so over the next couple of weeks, I’ll double-click on some of those ideas and, as always, try to turn them into practical systems.

Let’s start with one theme that kept showing up: how to make deliberate trade-offs without forgetting to enjoy the life we’re building.

Tip of the Week: Stop trying to balance everything at once. Define your current season, choose what deserves disproportionate attention, and give yourself permission to let other things wait.

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The Theory Behind

You can have almost anything, but probably not everything at once. Greg McKeown makes this case in Essentialism: when we don't deliberately choose where our time and energy go, other people and circumstances will happily choose for us. Economics gives us another useful concept: opportunity cost. Every yes is also a no because time, energy, and attention are finite. Career. Marriage. Kids. Friends. Health. Sports. Hobbies. Travel. Side projects. We can care about all of them, but we can't maximize all of them simultaneously. Instead of pursuing permanent “balance,” we can think in seasons. One season might emphasize career; another might require more from us as parents; another might be about health. The goal isn't equal allocation. It’s intentional imbalance.

The priorities of one season shouldn't automatically become the priorities of the next. Economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser coined the term status quo bias to describe our tendency to prefer things as they already are. This can happen with surprisingly big decisions: our careers, where we live, routines, commitments, and even our relationship with work. A decision can be completely right when we make it and wrong three years later. Kids grow. Parents age. Careers evolve. Finances change. We change. A good system therefore needs a review mechanism: If I were making this decision from scratch today, would I still choose it? Changing the answer doesn't mean the original decision was wrong. It might simply mean the season changed.

Enjoyment deserves a place in the system too. The Japanese-inspired concept of Misogi, involves choosing big, meaningful challenges each year and putting them on the calendar well in advance. One part of the philosophy I love is what happens next: once the big thing is there, the rest of life has to organize itself around it. I think we can apply the same principle beyond huge challenges. If traveling, skiing, seeing friends, playing sports, or simply having fun matters to us, we can put those things on the calendar first and let routine life fill the spaces around them (not the other way around). Parkinson's Law famously says that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Our obligations seem to do the same thing. If we don't reserve space for the life we want, routine life (and other people!) will happily reserve it for us.

What I’ve Learned

You don't need to wait until January to start a new season. I think we sometimes confuse life seasons with yearly goals: January is when we start exercising, learning something new, changing jobs, or finally tackling that project. Annual goals are useful, but nothing forces our lives to operate on a January-to-December calendar. A new season can start in March, on a random Tuesday, or because something important in your life changed. The important part is noticing that change and consciously asking: Given my life right now, what deserves more of me... and what needs to wait?

We tend to be terrible at prioritizing life goals. Looking back, one of the times I tried hardest to get in shape was right after my first kid was born (this is actually very common!). Something in the primitive part of my brain apparently decided that becoming a father meant I needed to become physically stronger (evolutionary male-protection instincts, maybe?). So there I was, trying to work out more and play pickup basketball while we had a newborn at home. In hindsight...probably not the ideal season for that particular priority. But that's the thing: these trade-offs seem obvious only after we write them down, ponder them, and reflect on them. And if you share your life with a partner, don't design your seasons alone. That's part of what having a partner is for: you're not managing two independent lives, there's actually a big overlap.

Make It Happen

1. Name your current season. Give the next 3–6 months a name: “Career acceleration,” “Young kids,” “Getting healthy,” “Exploration,” or whatever fits your reality. Naming it forces you to acknowledge what currently deserves more of you.

2. Pick 2–3 disproportionate priorities. Not ten. Choose the few areas where you consciously want to invest more time and energy during this season.

3. Create a “Not Now” list. Explicitly identify things you care about but won't maximize right now. You're not saying never. You're saying not this season. Give yourself permission to be average at some things temporarily.

4. Reopen yesterday's decisions. Once a quarter, ask: If I were deciding from scratch today, would I make the same choice? Review your major commitments, routines, responsibilities, and assumptions rather than automatically carrying them forward.

5. Put the big rocks on the calendar first. Borrow from Misogi: schedule something meaningful far enough in advance that the rest of life has to organize itself around it. It doesn't have to be climbing a mountain. Book the trip, sign up for the race, schedule the weekend with friends, or reserve the family adventure.

6. Review your season. Every 3–6 months, ask three questions: What deserves more of me now? What deserves less? What am I missing that I don't want to keep missing? Then consciously decide whether to continue the current season or start a new one.

I'd rather be intentionally unbalanced in the short term, but balanced over the long term. And hopefully, have a lot more fun along the way.

Seasonally yours,

Jorge Luis Pando

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