I’ll start this (short) entry by doing something I don’t normally do: pointing you toward something I didn’t write.
That something is this BuzzFeed News article by Anne Helen Peterson entitled How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and it covers a social phenomenon I’ve talked about elsewhere but haven’t seen explored in this kind of depth. The gist is that by trying to do it all—and by trying to harness every ounce of our productivity and working efficiency—we’re not only burning ourselves out, we’re overlooking simple errands like registering to vote or taking knives to get sharpened (something I’ve never done, btw.), which in turn is having adverse effects on our sense of fulfillment.
In addition, the article reads like a laundry list of issues that I’ve dealt with myself and/or have had friends deal with, including putting off low-reward errands, maximizing time by cutting meal prep, excessive multitasking, learning to overwork while in grad school (!), overworking in grad school because you’re one of many grad students vying for a disappearing set of opportunities (!!!), and even feeling guilty because you’re not watching enough of the five jillion cool Netflix series everyone else is talking about.
If any of these things ring familiar, I recommend clicking on the BuzzFeed link, since there’s not much else to read here.
Okay, I Lied: Here’s Why I Posted This
I actually found this article two weeks ago, read through it when I should have been working on final novel type-ups (thus increasing my sense of personal guilt), and thought, “Huh, this would make something cool to link to on the blog,” before bookmarking it and almost forgetting about it while I polished this other entry on Kafka and art instead.
That would have been the end of the story…except that last week, I fell badly ill with a case of the flu (damn you, elementary school kids!) that kept me tethered to the bed in a feverish state of aching pain for a solid six days. Needless to say, not much work got done last week.
While I’ll take my bout with the flu as yet another chance to tout how easy and awesome Japanese health care is, I also thought about something else during my resting week: I wasn’t making progress toward my goals, but the world wasn’t coming to and end.
This is a difficult feeling to describe if you don’t live the kind of hyper-over-scheduled life where every day you push yourself to do more and more…but for just those six days, not holding myself to those same stressful standards felt freeing. (It also felt freeing being able to watch massive blocks of Youtube and Netflix, but this was a secondary effect.)
When I woke up this morning (I’m writing this on Sunday), not only did I feel physically better, but I also felt ready to get up and do things, both because I had the energy (i.e., I wasn’t tired or burned out), but because I actually wanted to get up and do things. Again, this feeling is difficult to describe, but consider it the difference between wanting to work, and feeling like you have to work.
I’m not yet sure where this revelation will take me, but so far I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to live more in the moment of how I’m feeling on any given workday, rather than, say, mindlessly sticking to that day’s To-Do list. I’m also thinking that staying up too late is having a real effect on my sleep and on my ability to sit down to work on my own stuff on subsequent days (“More work, aughhhhhhhh”), whereas more well-deserved reading and movie breaks like I just finished talking about will bring me out of my work spell and keep my energy up.
Plus, you know, taking time to just chill and do nothing helps too.
Again, I’m not yet sure where this is going to go, but stay tuned for an update after I get back into the swing of things (I’ll be starting to send out queries for my novel this week, woah!), and if you haven’t already, check out that BuzzFeed article on productivity and burnout, because it’s that freakin’ good.
Oh yeah, one more thing—if you like what I write or find it at all relevant to what you’re going through in your own life, consider helping me out with a follow or two. It’s free, easy, helps me build my base, and keeps you in the know about what’s going on in my world. (Did I mention it’s free and easy???)
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