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The older I get, the less impressed I am by doing more

Published 24 days ago • 1 min read

My life is very full right now.

I'm juggling client work, building StorytellingU, working on a few new ideas, writing this newsletter, and attempting to maintain some semblance of a life outside my laptop.

This is not an email about how I dramatically simplified my life and now spend my afternoons reading novels in a sun-drenched chair.

I've had seasons like that. This isn't one of them.

And in the middle of all this busyness, I've noticed a shift.

For years, I've been impressed by people who seem capable of doing it all.

I've had friends who somehow managed to work full time, raise kids, take care of pets, go back to school, maintain friendships, and have a clean house and folded laundry to boot.

I looked at people like that and thought: Wow, they really have it together.

To be clear, I still find that kind of capacity impressive. I'm just less convinced it's what I aspire to. (Seriously, though, how do they do it?)

These days, I'm starting to think about my life a little more like an editor.

When I'm editing a piece of writing, I'm rarely asking, "What else can I fit in here?"

Instead, I'm asking what earns its place.

Does this sentence add something?

Does this paragraph move the idea forward?

Is this making the piece stronger, or is it just taking up space?

Sometimes the answer is easy. Sometimes it means cutting perfectly good writing because it simply isn't right for this piece.

I'm realizing the same questions are useful beyond the page.

There are plenty of good things I could do. Projects I could take on. Ideas I could pursue. Invitations I could accept. Things that might be interesting or useful or even fun.

But "good" and "worth making room for" aren't always the same thing.

Maybe that's one of the things age is teaching me: A full life isn't necessarily the one with the most crammed into it. It's the one that's been edited with intention.

I'm still working on that part. My calendar can confirm.

But I'm becoming less interested in how much I can fit in and much more interested in what earns its place.

Erin

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Erin Sanchez

Discover the power of storytelling to break through the noise, build meaningful connections, and ignite real change.

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