The fault in our Why(s)

Hello everyone! It has been a long time since I last written anything on my blog. I was too busy juggling student life, especially in terms of meeting some requirements in the university.

My morning routine went like this the past few days: I wake up. Prepare myself my morning coffee and ponder on life's X's and O's. I cross out (X) the things in my to-do list and prioritize the things that are urgent and important and encircling them (O) on my planner (See what I did there? Haha). 

As one of my teachers used to say, life is never linear and I had experienced this to a bone-cringing degree because of life and its unusual way of screwing things over when everything seems handy-dandy at the surface. If we're not careful, this leaves us to helplessly fend for ourselves alone. Things haven't been that well for my thesis mates and I in the past weeks. Life had been bittersweet, as all of us have been experiencing individual issues in other aspects in our lives that made our focus shift away from completing our thesis requirements, like a death of a very close relative, a problematic physical illness and several relapses leading to multiple occasions of being sucked in and spat out of the downward spiral. And all of this is happening while trying to comply with our academic requirements (which is already too downright depressing in itself haha). 

Sometimes because of these happenings, every time I transition from one focus to another, things felt like I was doing things under a blind fold. It was as if while I was doing things that I think would help bring me a step closer to where I want to be, my entirety is not really in the moment, further making myself question if I was really moving towards my goals in the first place. I keep asking myself Where am I going wrong? Lol. Just lately, over the weekend, I realized that all these feelings of being "not fully present", and not seeing the point of what I'm doing was that I forgot to consider one important factor in my productivity equation-- my Y's (why's) of doing things.

If you must ask if I'm even qualified to write about these things in the first place, I will only tell you what I know based on my experiences. I'm no certified life coach or therapist, but I do know my version of productivity. My version of productivity comes from a girl who had spent most of her life as an academic "overachiever", and throws herself on to her hobbies, her art, her writing, her reading, her knack of wanting to learn how things work and what makes people tick during her free time. Although these skills may not directly give me the best grades at school but it helps knowing I have something significant to contribute to the table when the need arises.

I basically had an obsession about being productive most of my life (it's probably the reason why I was thrown onto the fiery pits of chemical engineering in the first place), especially during college where every student has to be almost productive 24/7 in order to not get kicked out of the program. However, the thing about productivity is, you really don't need to suffer in order to be productive.

"You really don't need to suffer in order to be productive"

Discomfort yes. You actually need a certain amount of discomfort in order to be productive, but suffering is different. Suffering is really unnecessary discomfort.

Other versions call it working smart instead of working hard. It basically means, that sure, you can get a lot of things done day in and day out, and over timing without stopping for a break in between, but the body you occupy is going to betray you eventually since you keep depriving it from its basic needs -- rest, sleep, a break, d o p a m i n e (the reward system brain chemical). And if your mind was as destructive as mine in the middle of college, eventually, your mind convinces you to feel guilty about resting and the self-intoxicating cycle repeats all over again. The more you expose yourself to stress and abuse your body this way, the more you will be prone to mental and emotional fatigue and burnouts, and increases your chances of getting sick physically and mentally. As a result, productivity wouldn't be maximized and the whole charade you put your body through will eventually backfire.

The things I've mentioned in the previous paragraph are basically trivial. How you become productive without suffering too much is a question on efficiency. It's a question on how you pick your battles wisely and how often we become mindful of the shitty happenings in our lives so we can use them in the future to our advantage.

Our daily demands in the modern world basically revolves around efficiency. The efficiency I'm talking about is how much we can get things done or how much output we can produce over how much resources we had invested (e.g. energy, time, mental space, f*cks given lol). Assessing efficiency in a certain area, like a product, a process or a project is basically the main reason why we have engineers, yet it's so sad why most engineers tend to devalue themselves for the sake of producing more output.

A single person can only do so much. There is a reason why efficiency can never be equal to or go beyond 100%. It's the second law of thermodynamics at play. Typical engines or machines even only have efficiencies ranging from 30% - 70%, if a machine has this much low of an efficiency, how much more a complex, self-contradicting, living, breathing  human being? Considering how complex  human beings are, the efficiency would probably be much lower than machines which only exist to do a limited number of jobs.

It makes sense because if you think about it, most people tend to turn into emotionless robots when  they feel like they are at the peak of their efficiency. They don't get to think too much, they become emotionally detached, turning little by little into a machine, all in the hopes of being a few steps closer to the outcome that they want to reach. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. It's just that, while we are intending to be steps closer to our peak efficiency and to maximize our productivity (which is good), we'll also tend to not be fully present in the moment. The thing about not being fully present is that, while we become emotionally numb to the stressful things that are happening (as it is a way of our brain of protecting ourselves), it also blocks out the good feelings, the warm feelings that come from the tiny little yellow rays of happiness that are supposed to make life worth living. 

Princess Carolyn trying to escape her feelings by fantasizing turning into a machine

An example of this is explicitly portrayed in the movie, Click. The main character Michael (played by Adam Sandler) wanted to keep skipping to the good parts of his life while avoiding the bad parts. As a result, he spent most of his life on autopilot losing important relationships with his wife and kids because he never appreciated the journey.

Adam Sandler plays Michael Newman in Click (2006)

Another thing about trying to obsessing our need to achieve optimum efficiency is that we will often our why's. We forget the reason why we do the things we're doing in the first place, especially when in a state of a burnout. We'll ruminate on the meaninglessness of our tasks, and often lead us to think in the meaninglessness of everything and it's enough reason to drive the most mentally stable person we probably know insane.

Bojack Horseman

However, the opposite side of the spectrum is ridden with much controversy as well, as we can't keep spending our lives in isolation with our own thoughts in a perpetual state of pondering if we're being productive enough or happy enough or miserable enough, and then getting angry at ourselves when we come face to face with the realization that we're not. This eventually leads to the same thing happening again -- the rumination, the self-pity, the guilt, the shame and pride... all of that icky stuff. This will only enable us to be more paranoid of ourselves and everyone around us and eventually leading us to feel miserable. We sadly need to move and get busy in order to be productive and to also feel better about ourselves.

I've been basically at both extremes at the graph, and I'm learning to master the art of balancing

It's all about balance.
It's all about choosing yourself over things that are destructive for you.

Choose yourself over your bad habits of self-pitying, ruminating and procrastinating, but also choose yourself above thinking that you're better than everyone else and that you don't need to change or adapt (because based on millions of years of evolution as a species or being made in the image and likeness of God, you need to).

Choose yourself being mindful and handling yourself with kindness over being a workaholic and subjecting yourself to mental and emotional torture that could be avoided if only you'd choose to learn how to be happier and healthier in any situation.

Choose yourself over your junk food that you keep feeding your brain.
Choose yourself over setting up really unrealistic expectations about yourself and about other people.

Choose yourself over not getting any physical exercise and not taking 10 minutes to meditate everyday and be fully present.
Choose yourself over any depreciating comment you say about yourself or about other people.

Choose congratulating yourself one box mark at a time on your to-do list and reevaluating your priorities over ruminating on why you think you're such a good for nothing lazy asshole and projecting your insecurities towards other people (in short, don't be a jerk), because I've honestly been there.

Choose grace over perfection.

I have preached this before and I'm going to preach it again:

It is really important to engage in self-care and self-improvement, because not only does it make us less irritable and less of a jerk to other people, but we'll also feel better and at peace with ourselves.

So stay kind.

Shout out to my women, Anne and Gail for the monthly Sunday coffee shop meetups! The content we discussed last Sunday inspired me to start getting behind the blogging keyboard again after a month-long blogging slump. Love ya'll 😘.