Business or pleasure?
Maybe a new
blog would have worked better (as I have swapped pretty much everything in my
life since I last wrote here about two years ago), but wanting to work on my
commitment issues, I decided to pick up this “dirty laundry of past writing”
and grabbed my keyboard before I had too much time to think about why.
During time
spent outside this blog, I had time to ask myself several times the following
question: I love science, I love my job,
and I have almost everything I ever wished for in life, so why am I so tired?
When I look
around, it seems I may not be the only one feeling this way. Somehow, I sense
that some fellow PhD students/young professionals also feel that there is a
need to work as hard as possible, to be able to leave a fingerprint of you on
our planet. You need to be seen, heard, or you need to feel that you did
something to improve someone’s wellbeing or contributed to common good. Maybe
we do not even concretely realize that these are the motivations that drive
most of us to work perhaps more than is healthy.
Furthermore,
to me the paradox of all this lies inside the idea, that while you are working
long hours, you should be having the best time of your life. At least this is
what social media is telling you 24/7. People seem to be having it all, from
perfect families to amazing hobbies. Also, unconsciously we may think that before
the mid-life crisis hits, we still have the energy to do things that can
probably be done only once during our lifetime (depending on the set goals, it
may be traveling the world, becoming rich, raising a family, or just being
capable of defining your own rhythm of working to earn enough to be in peace
with your choices).
While being
constantly occupied at work and free time, you may realize that the vision you
had of you and the world around you changes as you go paving the way. In the
worst case scenario something that may happen is, that in some way, you find
out that no longer you are the main character of your own life, but become “a
product” of our time, and time just seems to slip through your fingers.
This
feeling of wanting things to make more sense drove me to search for some
serious self-awareness-, happiness- and successful career -literature and
online materials. I even signed up for a course dealing with these issues. I can
share some material, if you guys are interested in it.
I guess my
key finding when looking at my own life has been, that maybe it is time to
chill. Jobs will still be there even when you are not rushing to get them all and
work on them all at once. Likewise, the world will still be there to travel,
and improvements will remain to be fulfilled in someone’s life. Perhaps also
the dreams of the perfect free time evolve when you take a break from trying to
get it all at once.
It seems to me that the right direction is that we start to treat ourselves like our best friends. By accepting that
life will lead its way despite all our actions and effort, there may well be a brighter
tomorrow, and we may find new ways to make the world a better place. Having said this, to me,
time management may Still well be one of the biggest challenges of our times.
