Between Nothing and Everything

Issue No. 27 : How to live life with clear intentions and making choices that matters – to you

Over the last week I’ve caught up on my reading which is 20 books behind by reading four new books. I should be back on track by end of August.

One of my favorite quotes to live by is “You can do anything, but you can't do everything”, attributed to David Allen, the creator of the “Getting Things Done” productivity system. Though I don’t live by his system, I do love the quote.

Because it’s somewhere between nothing and everything we need to decide where we want to live, intentionally want to live, I should say. Lots in our lives just seem to happen to us but with clear intentions we can make what matters happen.

Everything in life is a choice, and when I say this I often hear that everyone cannot choose. But we can, really. Everyone on this planet can make a choice. The question though is if we can realize all our choices in the short-term. In the long-term we can make anything, but not everything happen.

Books I’ve read over the past week:

Nightshade by Michael Connelly (crime thriller) ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

The Big Empty by Robert Crais (crime thriller) ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Edge of Honor by Brad Thor (spy thriller) ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Robert Plant by Paul Rees (biography) ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

My goal for 2025 is to read hundred books. Currently I’m at 24 fully completed and 10 halfway so over the next few weeks I need to do double duty poolside. Why so many? Well, just like in swim training, something happens to your mind when you push yourself and over time you become much better at both reading and writing.

Creating meaning in life is about designing clear intentions, to choose as it were, for how you want to live your life well and then take action. These actions might be hard and take time but eventually they will materialize with consistent work.

As human beings, we often choose instant gratification over deferred gratification. We want the reward now and that’s how we get sucked into overconsumption of all kinds, from doomscrolling to alcohol addiction and obesity.

This reward chemical, also called dopamine, was created for our survival in a world of scarcity and worked well until we entered a world of abundance about fifty years ago.

If you think about it, we lived pretty healthy lives in general until the advent of punk rock (which I love) in the mid-70s, ironically emerged out of social protests of authority and inequality, and then everything went downhill from there.

The equation is easy:

To grow companies need to sell more stuff. By having reached a pretty high standard of living by the 70s, at least in the western world, one might think that we would have shifted our attention to Maslow’s top level in his hierarchy of needs, the self-actualization. But no, we kept consuming beyond our needs.

And here we are with little time, attention, and creative energy and so much stuff that we need to upgrade our house every few years to fit everything in. Not to talk about how overwhelming all information is, coming from all different angles and directions, driven by algorithms and machines to make us consume more.

So we must choose, however hard it is. But the more we practice the better we become at making choices and the better the choices eventually become.

Between nothing and everything I’ve chosen a few things that I’ve found are making my life much better:

• Practicing water sports (currently swimming)

• Reading books

• Making photos

• Listening to music

• Improving my writing

• Learning how to make and keep new and old friends

In these very simple daily areas I cover all necessary categories for living a full life: physically, mentally, socially, financially, intellectually, and emotionally. And I only own the essential gear that I need to practice these activities well.

The simple life.

Instead of listening to what I should spend my money on, I’ve taken the approach of deciding how I want to live my life. There is no keeping up with the Joneses, no showing off of wealth, no bragging rights (other than real visible skills) et cetera.

And I can, whenever I want, shift direction thanks to a) the Internet that provides knowledge and network, and b) the circular economy that provides resell and used gear platforms. It’s never been easier to living light and sustainably.

I think one of the reasons that we divert from doing fewer better things is that we’re told, through advertising and branding, that we can do everything (to sell more stuff). But sorry, we cannot. We have to choose.