Face it, Your Todo List is Endless
When I was in first year,
I remember waking up in my dorm almost every morning, well before the start of class (usually at 8:30). I would go down to the cafeteria, pour some coffee, and head back up to eat breakfast, looking out from the student lounge on the tenth floor of my residence. People would trickle by on their way to campus which made for a quiet half an hour, apart from the occasional hello. As the autumn went on, I would be able to catch the sunrise as it covered the campus buildings in a warm fuzzy glow.
Of course, time is a scarce resource when you’re studying engineering. The elevators moved agonizingly slow and they would stop at multiple levels. It would take at least 10 minutes to make the full trip. I could have eaten my breakfast in class or on the walk to school. Shouldn’t I have used that half an hour to get some well needed sleep? Why not spend the extra time catching up on emails, reviewing some notes, or going to the gym? Surely, there are better times in life to sit down, and do nothing but distract yourself with the same old view. For someone who takes pride in good time management, this morning routine seemed inexplicably non optimal.
But first, a thought.
Inevitably, there’s a time of year (school, work, or otherwise) that feels as hectic as this:
There’s a block of lectures in the morning, a three hour lab in the afternoon, a club meeting in the evening, and a group project to finish at night. Your planner reminds you to follow up with that recruiter you emailed a few days ago. Maybe you can multi-task at lunch to handle that a bit quicker. Your fitness app reminds you to keep up with your weekly step goal. There’s a convenient gap in the evening, so maybe you can squeeze in a run. You notice on your GCal that classes start later the next day. Maybe you can study for the upcoming midterm after that project at night. Perfect!
It feels satisfying when you figure out how to fit those tasks into your schedule, and squeeze more time out of your day. We inevitably deal with it as we assume more responsibility and independence.
Here’s the thing,
Why does it feel like those extra tasks we’ve finished never give us more free time?
If we’re becoming more efficient, why does it feel like we can never get ahead of those extra errands?
We put our heads down to get through this week, only for the next week to magically fill up again. We don’t catch a break, because we don’t give ourselves one when we’re presented with free time. There’s always another hurdle to jump over, another checkpoint we can put our efforts towards.
And how do we try to fix this never-ending problem? By throwing more efficiency and more technology at the problem. It’s counter-intuitive; we think that working smarter and faster will give us an edge, but we don’t realize that our goal posts simply move farther away the instant they seem attainable.
Of course, there’s a positive word for that called growth. It’s why the ambitious side of our nature likes to be a small fish in a big pond. And it’s often a phenomenally rewarding feeling! There’s no doubt, all that planning and optimization comes in handy when you’re faced with a challenging week. But when everything gets planned to squeeze one more task out of the day, is there such thing as too much efficiency?
What happens when this hunger for faster growth and more productivity becomes a perpetual state of mind?
“Millennial burnout” is a recent term to specifically describe the constant anxiety and inability to relax among students and young professionals. I don’t know enough to support or refute the many many articles and books that attribute it to a litany of factors. Regardless of the cause, when I look around at my peers in the competitive university I attend — when people skip lectures not because they are delinquent, but because they’d rather learn the content “faster” on their own, and prepare for an upcoming job interview in the meantime — when people build their portfolios, resumes, and online presence in an ever escalating arms race with each other to get that “fulfilling career” immediately after graduation — when this culture proliferates beyond university, and kids seek competitive internships before they even enter their first year. I can’t help but wonder whether this positive feedback loop of insatiable hunger will lead anywhere but to an eventual burnout if left unchecked.
I don’t claim to have a perfect answer for myself, let alone anyone else. And it’s also true that broad trends don’t reflect individual idiosyncrasies. It’s possible you can’t relate to the tragically brief feeling of mental relief after getting through a hard week, only for it to disappear once you realize next week isn’t looking much better. If so, congratulations, you’re doing really well! But assuming you’re with the rest of us, I do think there are some ways to view this problem that can better help you reach your own sense of balance.
How about I just take a break when I’m done?
Vacations help, but even if you’re fantastic at compartmentalizing your thoughts while away from work, breaks just loosen a pressure valve on your problems until you return. Very soon, the pressure builds right back up.
Eventually, that default state needs to shift into something more sustainable.
Fighting burnout is a mentality shift. It’s being willing to take some of that free time you created, and deliberately “do nothing” with it, despite the storm of work that may be swirling around you.
Not just doing it after you “get through this week”, but doing it as consistently as possible, even when it feels like you’re in the thick of it. It’s internalizing that the list is truly infinite. And although those tasks won’t solve themselves just by sitting around, they also won’t end the world if they were handled just a little bit slower. You’ll work them out eventually whether you saved that half an hour or not, and you might just save yourself from chronic burnout in the process.
So what was I doing in the morning?
Those quiet half an hour mornings gave me some time to clear my mind and mentally prepare for the day ahead. It wasn’t “doing nothing” per say. I would notice the steady stream of cars passing by on the street below, and admire the way different buildings on campus looked based on when they were built. More important was what I didn’t think about. I wasn’t thinking about my plans for the day or worrying about an upcoming deliverable. These mornings were my flashes of zen, spread throughout the week to just reflect on the moment, and temporarily detach myself from day to day worries. It was a deliberately non-optimal habit to remind myself that in the broader perspective, not everything has to be done as soon as humanly possible.
Of course, an obligatory disclaimer,
Finding what habits work for you is a constantly evolving process in and of itself. I find that the best way to discover them starts with thinking about what simple hobbies can take your mind off of work.
Success isn’t to maintain a perfect state of calm and balance forever. Pragmatically, there will be moments in a career when you need to throw all your effort into your work. The trick is to have the awareness to recognize when that critical moment is over, and to have reliable strategies which can flip that mental off-switch.
Now a days, I know that reading a book for a couple of hours helps me slow down the pace of a busy week. But of course, that doesn’t help when I can’t find a good book to read. I know that walks or runs offer some time away from endless notifications and distractions. But that only works when it’s warm outside. There’s no silver bullet that works forever and in all cases if only it could be discovered. This will always remain a work in progress.
Maybe one day, we’ll all reach that point of satisfaction where we can retire on the proverbial beach, away from all the noise; honestly, it could be quite literal as well.
But after all, our end destinations are fickle. We love to change them as they get closer within our reach. So perhaps it’s better to just try and enjoy the journey in the meantime 🙂 .
