Being *Constantly* Productive is Doing You More Harm than Good
The balance of rest
When I was 20 years old, I found this girl that I was head-over-heels in love (read:obsessed) with. This led to me coming out to my parents, who did not approve of me being in a queer relationship, and to my world as I knew it at the time crashing down. I was determined to not let it change the upward trajectory I assumed my life was on, so I continued to throw myself into everything I needed to continue to reach my goals.
I was a full time student who, at the time, wanted to be a teacher. This meant on top of classes, I was in practicums 24 hours a week.
I had been told that campus involvement was a big deal when applying for teaching jobs, so I became President of two different education-related organizations on campus, secretary of the GSA, and was an active member of three other clubs.
Then there was the issue of money. Being an out queer person with conservative parents meant I had to sever the aspects of financial support my family had been bestowing on me through school thus far. I had two jobs. I tutored at my University for three hours a day on weekdays, and I worked in a group home from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends.
Of course, I also had to deal with this pesky stuff called “homework.”
For the first six weeks or so, being the kind of person I was, I’ll admit that I fell into having an inappropriate sense of superiority over it. I was cramming so much into every day, and I felt so successful because of it. I would prattle off my schedule to any of my classmates or other attendees at my University whenever they made mention of being tired or burned out.
I started wearing dresses every day, despite not being a particularly feminine person, because I “didn’t have time to put a whole outfit together.”
I would brag to my coworkers on weekends about it, especially if I was paired with a colleague who wasn’t in school at the time.
I knew most people weren’t doing what I was doing.
However, I didn’t know why, until the day I hit the wall. I went from having a completely normal day to being curled in a ball in the hallway of the room my girlfriend at-the-time and I shared with another roommate, sobbing, the minute she left for an overnight shift. The roommate tried to comfort me while struggling to understand what was wrong, and I struggled to muster the words. I was overwhelmed by all the expectations I’d put on myself and struggling with the fact that I’d left myself with no time whatsoever to deal with how I felt about what was going on in my familial relationships right then.
Finally, I mustered out: “I can’t do everything.”
And that was when the long, slow decline that ended with me dropping out of school for a semester began. All of that progress and accomplishment for what felt like nothing at the time.
Rest is paramount to success.
You can’t put your best work forward if you never give yourself time to live life outside of a laundry list of projects and obligations.
I’m still a very high-achieving person with multiple irons in the fire, but I’ve rearranged my life now in such a way that if I come home from work one day and I just want to crash and catch up on a tv show, there’s room to have the occasional day like that. I’ve created a life where it’s okay to have days where not much besides the absolute essentials gets done.
I’ve also met multiple goals that I wouldn’t have expected myself to even set in the first place if we could go back and talk to that 20 year old kid who was crying in a floor, and in quick succession at that.
There are many definitions of what it means to be “successful,” but for most people, happiness is at least some part of that definition. As such, you can’t have success without giving yourself a break once in a while.
