On PSL Problems

Good morning gorgeous, I'm so happy to see you this crisp September morning. So much has happened this week that's straight-up bananas. The Joker is giving violent and disaffected young men a hero

I woke up at 4 am last night remembering an email I forgot to send. This isn’t an odd occurrence, 4 am and I have an understanding. We see each other weekly and it’s never because we’re both doing great. It’s the worst “you up?” relationship I’ve been in.

At 4 am I’m never pondering big, interesting questions. Anxiety is a nit picky bitch, and she’s not here for solving big problems. Anxiety likes the details, the missed emails, and texts, the weird way your boss said that thing. She’s in the weeds.

But here’s what 4 am forgets— the details are the things first forgotten when they're no longer needed. The small stuff, the rude comment, and the missed emails are easily forgotten in a month. The bigger stuff, the work conflicts, and the failed projects fade from our memory in a year.

I call these forgettable stresses PSL problems. I can explain.

When I was early in my career I remember a fall where I'd have a PSL almost every morning. Super gross. I had some friends at work, and we’d walk to Starbucks and talk about work problems. I remember the stress, the drama, and how high on cortisol and caffeine we were.

But for the life of me, I can’t remember why. The people and situations that caused that stress are fuzzy in my memory. I honestly don't know what was so stressful, I just can't remember. Those problems seemed so big at the time, but in the long view they don't past muster.

We waste a lot of our energy and life thinking about small close up PSL problems. It's hard not to, they're in our face constantly— the unsent emails, the unscheduled appointments, the awkward interactions that keep popping into our bleary-eyed 4 am brains. Damn they're noisy. Here's the thing— these small stresses, even if solved, won’t impact our lives in any meaningful way.

We're spending all of our time on 1-month problems, and neglecting our 10-year selves. We need to make space to think longer-term, to identify what problems need to be solved to make our 10-year self happy. If we give the small stuff all of the space, the big stuff doesn’t get the room to plan and dream.

This week, let's try to identify when we're giving too much space to the small crap and clear some of it out. Our lives will be so much bigger if we give ourselves the time to dream it up.