A few years ago, I attended a seminar in Chicago. It was ostensibly for fitness instructors, but several of the main points could be carried over to any job or aspiration. One example really stuck with me.

The speaker said that we all want to be our best all the time, but we’re human and thus it’s impossible to be your very best at everything in your life at all times. For instance, you may want to be the best wife, friend, writer, cat mom, runner, daughter, employee, self-care person… all the time. You can’t be the best at every single one of those things simultaneously. You can be pretty good at them, but not the best. Pick one per week, was this speaker’s advice. One week, you’ll be an amazing spouse. The next, amazing writer. After that, self care.

I used this story last week with a friend who was struggling with writing submissions for our group. She wanted to get everything right before she submitted it. But part of the group is about critique and pointing out those things that you’ve missed. “Pick one thing to get right,” I told her. “Of course, you’re going to try and get it all right, but you’ve only got a week between submissions and you have other things to do in life. Pick one aspect to really nail in this submission and we’ll let you know about everything else if it needs tweaking.”

I think this can be difficult for anyone who has a high work ethic, but in the end, I think it allows you to be present for the priority of the moment. You can multitask and fold laundry while you talk on the phone, but what’s getting more attention? The laundry or the person you’re talking to? I hope the person you’re talking to. And your laundry will probably be folded fine because you’ve folded laundry a billion times and also, if you scrunch a sleeve, no big deal.

Something odd happened in January. Dean was out of town the week of New Year's Day and I had an idea for a story. I wasn’t sure if it would be any good, but I really was caught up with the idea, so I started writing. I flew through the first 30,000 words and asked a friend to read them to make sure they weren’t just crap. They weren’t. I kept going.

For some reason I was really inspired by this story and couldn’t stop writing. I didn’t want to stop writing. It got to the point where if I wasn’t working or working out, I was writing. I lived on crackers and peanut butter. I picked up after myself, but I didn’t clean. I took care of the cats, of course, but nothing else. I finished the book—over 99,000 words—in 28 days. I’ve been tweaking it since and it’s longer, but I have never finished anything that long so fast.

I really wrote until I fell asleep frequently.

I’ve had a lot of people asking me how and really that’s the answer. I didn’t do anything else. All I did was write. And it was great, but I definitely made a choice to focus on this one story for that time. I knew that getting struck by this kind of inspiration flow was rare, so I just went with it. I don’t regret it, but I don’t think it would be healthy for it to be my entire life.

Fortunately everyone else gave me grace and allowed me to give them the B version of me while I focused on this one thing.

So if you’re ever struggling with something that you really want to get done, or there’s something you really want to excel at, see if you can clear some time in your schedule to make that thing your priority. I’m the worst when it comes to wanting to do all the things all the time, but I do try and reign it in. And it makes it a little less stressful.

Sometimes you gotta let something slide