...This one is more about returning myself to myself, finding space in my life for intrinsic joy and peacefulness instead of competing against others or seeking a brass ring of some sort. I will always want to engage in competitive sports, as far as I can imagine, but competition does not have any place anywhere else in my life and even the sports bit is turning into the pursuit of craft-like personal excellence. I just need to watch out that none of it takes over to the detriment of other areas of my life that are important (friendships, community, mental health).
With regards to work, how do you intend to pare down? Do you have work that is not strictly paid work? The reason I ask is because what I see in myself and others is a tendency to complain about being busy but taking it as an unsolvable problem. Would you say this is your primary design problem right now?
I think the pursuit of personal excellence is great as long as a person realizes it's a hobby/optional enjoyment and not a necessity. We don't have to be excellent to be worthy of life, but it can be fun to reach for improvement and that's a good realization from your life view exercise.
I plan to pare down work by eliminating one category of my paid employment. I am pretty resistant to working a straight 9 to 5 job so in effect I have three jobs that are each very flexible, but one of them is less enjoyable than the others so I plan to ditch it and put those hours into one of the other gigs.
I am lucky that I enjoy my work and have enjoyed it more every year that I've been in this field--I can't remotely claim mastery but as I move further toward it, the work is more rewarding, so I'm not strongly motivated to leave employment behind.
Overall, I don't feel too busy; although from the outside I look like a very busy person (so people say) I feel like I have plenty of time to spend as I choose. My perspective there may be skewed by the fact that I have already raised children and all the multi-tasking that is entailed in doing that while working/going to grad school, etc. So, working full time and having time to myself after work feels like a holiday, not a grind.
I did the work and life view exercise and felt there was a good fit between mine--again, this is true for me at age 50 after deliberate choices made in my 40's to re-create that alignment, and fine tuning since I entered the job market after that.