What Is The Single Most Important Thing To Master In Your Twenties?
…. Thoughts a week after my 28th birthday.
I turned 28 a little more than a week ago. It was a lovely day. I’m the kind of person who’s just naturally extra happy on my birthday. Every wish/gift is an added bonus to this already elevated state of mind. To have a partner just as giddy with excitement at my aging = bonus x 10. My boo showered me with love and attention through pretty gifts and sweet gestures. Since my 27th birthday back home, when he was my fiancé who surprised me by showing up in Dubai, I have suspected that solo reflection time will no longer be one of the highlights of birthdays. Not to say that it won’t happen, even if a week later! Turning 28, what are the aspects of my life most urgently seeking attention?
I got a shelf off Facebook Marketplace a couple of days ago. I knew I wanted it in my lounge the moment I set eyes on it. Took me a full 24 hours of hoping and stalking to make sure I was right there to swoop in when the previous inquiry fell through. Quite surreal. Three months in, I finally have a place to keep my media, art supplies, books, journals. As I skimmed through some of my older journals, I was struck by how lovingly I could speak to myself. How beautifully I have encouraged myself through words in the past.
I also noticed that pretty much every other entry was about me feeling that I’m not doing enough.
I’m not going at my goals fast enough, not enough momentum. There’s too many ideas, too much potential that could possibly be going to waste. It quickly ends up with me feeling I’m not enough as a person and the same pen then fleshes out wisdom and motivation to keep me going until the next breakdown. SAME concerns. For close to three years now, my entries are enumerated lists of things that need to get done. I’m in a state of perennial catch up with my goals, where there’s no clear indicator of completion or success.
My lists look something like this:
- Get up at 5am
- Meditate
- Work on your podcast (1.5 hours)
- Write a blog post (1.5 hrs)
- Clean cupboard/dust shelves/sweep & wipe floors/<insert chore>
- Go for a run or to the gym or for a swim (45min-1.5 hrs)
- Eat dinner by 7pm. Switch off all social media at 8pm.
- Read & journal (8–10)
- Sleep by 10.
I’m yet to do all of these things satisfactorily in one 24 hour day. On a great day, I’ll manage about 5 of these things.
Other activities like cooking, washing dishes, laundry, a phone call, a social media dive, errands, affect the pace of the day and the number of items crossed off. The point is I’m constantly resetting, trying different things, to see that list through. This list represents discipline, an elusive force I’ve been chasing for a while. In this quest for optimum potential living, many words come up — structure, organization, regularity, routine. Endless reading on the process of creativity, the cure for procrastination, and best practices for a creative have taught me that we need something more than motivation and ‘bursts’ if we want to deliver, as creative professionals. It has to be a thing you do, like it or not. Show up, do the work, consistently. To be successfully creating requires to be absolutely not creative about the process, it would seem. It can’t be based on likes and dislikes or how you feel in the moment. Certain things need to be non negotiable. And there lies the biggest clash with life as we know it today. We negotiate our way with everything.
Life today is a plethora of choices, but barely any of them are mindful.
When you try to deactivate your Facebook account, FB negotiates with you to use some of their other tools that will help track your time on the platform, thus check on yourself. If you were to ignore that blurb, go cold turkey and get off all social media — popularly referred to as a digital detox — you are confronted with the truth that this isn’t one problem. You are essentially tackling three issues:
- A lack of willpower
- A hard time staying focused on one activity for a set period of time
- A hard time saying no.
Even as I’m writing this, I have read two articles and glanced at my other tabs a few times. Constant overstimulation and having too much control have made my mind a bratty five year old. I’m currently off social media but I fill that void with YouTube, or Netflix, or Amazon Prime. I can fill that void with enabling every question that pops up in my head with an Internet search.
The single most important thing you want to master in your twenties is creating good habits. For me personally, the struggle has not been distractions. It hasn’t been an inablity to know what’s important. My biggest obstacle is to catch myself in those weak moments and when I do, to be able to say NO.
When I think back to my mother’s generation, growing up in the 70s and 80s, they did have distractions… Things youngsters wanted to do instead of duty at hand. Fewer in number but just as tempting. Indian society bequeathed family elders with the job of saying no to things. In my mom’s case, this was her grandfather. In time, choices and distractions are numerous in comparison but authority has declined. Personal freewill has more prominence but only to our detriment. We’ve got to be the ones doling out the tough love on ourselves.
In my quest for good habits with tough love, I have acquired some bad ones.
I get disheartened when my life doesn’t follow a routine. I just can’t do set things at the same time regularly. Brushing my teeth in the morning is literally the only activity that hasn’t ever been modified except for the few times I decided to take a shower first and then brush my teeth, just for kicks.
I have come to the conclusion that routine is a tool to make being disciplined much easier. As children, a routine is set in place to generate a “sameness” day to day, sowing the seeds for good habits and behavior and to bring stability and comfort on some level. As an adult, a routine can be hard to follow even if you are motivated by the strong desire to be better, not only because some of us reject monotony fiercely, but because life is unpredictable. One day my fridge needs fixing, I might be having people over for dinner a few days later — how can I level up, day after day, to that ambitious list?
As of my 28th birthday, I’m reevaluating what needs to be routine, and what needs to just be a focused task. I need to get up early every day. I don’t need to write every single day but when I do, it needs to be a focused activity. I need flow mode everyday for a minimum of 2 hours ideally, the activity can vary.
The goals I want to achieve are writing regularly. The problem with infrequent posting is that when I do write, it’s a big rant about my not writing! I have a lot more to offer, I do! As a content creator, I would like to also create videos and films. Lastly, I want to finish this second season of my podcast and grow the platform. Possibly continue Aliens with Visas but make season three more me- centric rather than theme centric. There is no way I can thrive on three platforms as a content creator unless I draw out my plans clearly and push myself incessantly.
The life I’m leading is fine as is but big desires, require big sacrifices. On the surface, it isn’t even such a big desire. I just want to be the best version of myself. But to each of us, this line means something completely different. In 28 years, the idea of a best version of me is clearer but more demanding than ever before.
