Many parents are faced with the impossible task of being parent, teacher, and employee, all at the same time. Mercifully, the “teacher” role is soon to end, but the overwhelm has taken its toll already.

Whenever there are two or more things to do at once, we might bounce, like a human pinball, back and forth from one to the other. Which one is the loudest? Which one is the most insistent? Which one is the whiniest? With so many pings and people vying for our attention at any given moment, we quickly become overloaded. How can we possibly function?

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As I look over my misspent life — in those moments when it feels like I’ve had a misspent life — I can come up with a long list of things I wish I had done, and nagging regrets about the things I did.

Some of these things are impossible to do anything about (damn biological clock), but some of them are things I can begin to resolve today, if I would stop being so morose.

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What happens when you clear the decks to make room for your work — that most challenging work that you have been putting off but you know you need to do?

For many of us, nothing.

One of the weirder discoveries in observing my work habits, as well as those of my students, employees, and the people I coach, is that time has so little to do with whether something gets done.

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When people call my music school inquiring about lessons for adults, they often wonder in all sincerity if it’s even possible for them to learn. “I’m thirty-two. Is it too late for me to learn how to play the piano?”

Whenever I’m asked a question like this, I jokingly tell respond that they should’ve called a week earlier, and now it’s too late.

People get the “too late” idea from a misinterpretation of the research that shows that from the birth to age six, human beings have a much higher capacity for absorbing language and music. It’s during this time that children actually develop not only skill and knowledge in these areas, but the aptitude itself. In other words, they it’s not so much their ability but their potential ability that’s increasing. A child who has a lot of exposure to music during their formative years, then, will have increased potential in music as an adult.

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This was a sentiment I had heard many times from adult students. Coming from a fifty-year-old with a demanding job and family obligations, it had a veneer of validity. I had often had a similar thought myself, as I compared my career to those of the people I aspired to be like.

However, hearing the same exact words from a small child caused me to question my beliefs. His words confirmed for me that the concern about running out of time and falling behind is driven by fear, not reality.

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