I have always been the type who has loved to be “busy.” In fact, that is my go-to answer when people actually ask how I am doing. But what does busy actually mean? It has been something that I have struggled with a lot over my life and more particularly, now. To me, busy has always a good thing. It means that I am being productive, it means that I am adding value to society, it means that I am worth it. There is this narrative that is set up in our culture that if we aren’t doing anything, we aren’t going to “make it” or be successful. Failure being one of my biggest fears, it made me feel so uncomfortable to think about actively choosing to not always being doing something. After all, the more I can do in the day, especially when it comes to task lists and projects, the “better” I am, right?
Productivity is a bit of a passion of mine, an art. When people ask me, “Wow, you did all of that in a day?” I get this great feeling inside that I did something that people didn’t believe was possible. While I will get to some of the downsides of this type of mindset in a bit, I have learned a lot about how to maximize time in order to get maximum efficiency out of basically anything. If it is cleaning, how can I make sure not a single moment is wasted. If it is exercise, how can I spend the least amount of time at the gym and get the maximum benefit. The goal has always been — NO WASTED TIME.
I have used almost every single software tool under the sun that can fall under the productivity category. From to do list apps to full productivity organizers, it is usually the thing that I not only test, but I read about before I go to bed because my brain is constantly thinking about, “how can I be more efficient?” The night usually starts with “top productivity apps of the year.” Then it moves to “this tool vs that tool.” Then it goes to testing them the next day, contemplating about upending my entire way of doing things, and then deciding whether it’s worth it or not. There have been some great ones along the way. ToDoist was probably the tool that I used for the most amount of time in my life because it was dead simple. I think one of the things that overwhelm me, and probably most people, is trying to make sure everything fits in the new system. Spoiler alert, much like I have learned with cameras, there is no perfect tool for you. You will see YouTubers and bloggers say “this system will fix everything.” It won’t. It all goes back to the tool that you need to accomplish the job. And at the end of the day, it is in order to get more time in life to do the things that we love.
Despite all of these tools often being a distraction, in the long run, to this free time, they also offer insights. I began to observe the things that I was spending the most time on, the tasks that I would complete that would move the needle the most, and what tasks just seemed a bit pointless because they could be done at a later time. Just because the task is there, does not mean it needs to get done. There will always be more tasks, endless things that we can all do to get ahead. But a breaking point is always reached when we try to do too much….burnout. And man, have I been burned out multiple times in my life. It’s that moment where you just stare at the screen, sometimes for even an hour, and do absolutely nothing because your brain is going in circles. It’s the moment when you complete a piece of work and you don’t feel inherently proud of the work, but just happy that it is done. You begin to dread the thought of opening the laptop or taking on anything new. Then, the stress sets in.
If the productivity stops, the success stops. If the success stops, then what happens? Just push through, it will get better. Best solution, double down and be tougher. Grind it out, burnout is for the weak. You can always do more, and the ones that make it are the ones that gave up everything. So don’t stop.
This was, and still can be, my thought process when I reach burnout. I know, it’s not healthy and it’s definitely not good for my mindset either. But it has gotten me this far, so why change? Chest pain and eye twitches, that’s why. The body lets you know when it has reached a breaking point and things need to change. Despite me doing all the “things” I normally do to manage stress like breathwork, exercise, and journaling, the body is still letting me know something is wrong.
On Sundays, to prepare for the week ahead, I usually do what’s called a “reset” day. It’s a day where I clean, organize my life, do the laundry, meal prep, etc. While it is still a busier type of day, there is something beautiful about the reset day that I always look forward to — I am not doing work. Sure, I might think about it a bit, but the majority of my time is thinking about other things. Usually, when it comes to Monday, things go a lot smoother and I am productive, not just from a task perspective, but by really moving the needle in a positive way. I began to look at why this was the case. It was always my belief that strong preparation equals strong performance. It still does but it is more that I allowed myself to not do as much towards my big goals. To take a break from them and look to something else, knowing that I will come back to it. I decided to take it a step further and wonder, if I did absolutely NOTHING in a day, how could that impact things? It was way easier said than done.
I spent the beginning of the day with my body in a constant state of mild panic. My body and mind were in this battle of feeling they needed to do work while also trying to say it was important to do nothing. I found myself just staring out the window for some solid blocks of time, trying to convince myself that it was the right decision. I walked down to the water, one of my favorite places to go, and just stared at the sea. I began to feel this sense of calm come over me, almost a release. It felt amazing, and I thought I had done it, I had rested enough. It had only been an hour. Now I was just bored, back to wanting to occupy myself with something to do. This continued for another couple of hours and then something magical happened, I snapped out of it.
It was this moment where I looked around and almost felt like I was looking at myself in third person. I saw a person just going through life, much like everybody else, and I could almost see the movie begin to unfold of the turning point. It was the moment where the way things had been would not be the way things would be going forward. It would be the moment where the old self was left behind and the new self could take over. It was a real red pill, blue pill moment.
It became clear to me that my “work” doesn’t define who I am, it is merely something I am interested in as this person. That idea of being busy, while seemingly awesome, is merely a false narrative to feel important, the ego.
And that ego had driven me for far too long. While I have never done anything for the “approval” of others, I was doing it for the approval of myself, to know that I was capable of something. But seeing how many things I can check off a list, or how many emails I can send, when zoomed out, has zero meaning to the greater pursuit of fulfillment.
I have always wanted to find the boundary of what I am capable of. But finding that boundary, especially for it to be meaningful, has to be something that comes from deep inside the mind and body. I have always believed that our minds are the only limiting factor in our abilities. The body can handle a lot more than we think and the mind is also a lot more malleable that we think it is. Going back to when people didn’t think I could accomplish so much in a day…whether that was a good or a bad thing, it was the overcoming of what was believed to be possible. Now, that didn’t exactly add a deep, fulfilling benefit to my life but I feel it is very much rooted in the way that I live my life. When I began to think about the other areas where this could have also been the case, I found that it was a fairly common occurrence.
When I was young, I didn’t believe that I could make a speech by memorizing it to over a 1000 people in eight grade, but I did. I didn’t think that I could swim to the shore from middle of the wharf as a junior lifeguard in cold water, but I did. I didn’t think that I could do an Ironman, but I did. I didn’t think that I could create films that millions of people would get to see, but I did. All of these things that I didn’t think I was capable of, I achieved. There were definitely failures along the way and lessons, but I far surpassed, in every one of these things, what I thought I could do when I first set out to do them. One of the most important parts is that most of these, especially later in life, were all ideas that were born out of being bored, by doing absolutely nothing.
This is the time of year when we find ourselves being a little bit more bored. It is that downtime between one year and planning for the next. This is a beautiful opportunity to truly explore the boredom and find what you are really wanting to do, the boundaries you are wanting to push, and envision the feeling of when it is accomplished. I encourage you to spend time doing absolutely nothing. Put the phone away, turn off Netflix, do nothing. It will be uncomfortable in the beginning, but there will be a moment where it clicks. Just be patient.