Fish and bear's paw

Mencius said: I want fish, and I also want bear's paw. If I can't have both, I'll give up the fish and take the bear's paw.

The example is deliberately ridiculous, because the point is the next sentence. I want life, and I also want what is right. If I can't have both, I'd give up life.

Mencius isn't asking for martyrdom. He's pointing out that a person who refuses to choose will end up having chosen anyway, in a worse way, by default.

That's the part that applies to everyone with a calendar.

You want a serious body of work and you want to be available to everybody who asks. You want a calm household and you want to answer messages until ten. You want to be someone with a point of view and you want to be liked by everyone in the room. You may not optimise both. There is a sum somewhere.

The most expensive version isn't choosing the lesser thing. It's refusing to choose and letting the unspoken preference do the deciding, because unspoken preferences always choose the comfortable option.

The exercise that actually shifts something is in words on a page: name the two things, then write the sentence "if I can only have one, I take...". Then look at how your calendar has already been answering the question.

MOJOWAY is a place to say both things out loud before the calendar decides. A coach sees the trade you didn't know you'd made, which is often the whole intervention.