It has been 20 days since the last content I posted. I am on another hiatus again, now much longer. I still engage and curate content from time to time, but not as much as before. As much as I want to, real-life errands take much of my energy and time. Work is so hectic. I still work from home, but I needed to visit the lab more frequently than in the past months. Catch up on the research that I am doing for my graduate studies. I end up physically and mentally exhausted every day for the entire week. Sometimes I questioned myself if trading of weekend leisure is worth it. My answer is always uncertain, but I am betting it on leaping fate. On top of that, I am still overcoming self-doubt and little burnout.
I love to write and draw. It is something that breaks my routine. While I do less of latter nowadays, I still write from time to time but can't finish and publish it. Writing, reading, and sharing content encourages me to see different perspectives towards topics that interest me. To sum it up, I enjoyed it. While my decision to not publish content was purely due to my hectic schedules and the inability to finish, I think it was the best thing to do than put content half-baked. It was the same thing with the research I was doing. I wasn't able to get a favorable result not until I put it on the sideline for a week, and, voila, things turned out a bit well.
Things start to sort out a little as things fall into the right places. I shared it before in my blog on self-doubt that ugly things happened. It resulted in doubting myself and the content I produced. Ugly circumstances went like dominoes on the trail. One comes after another. I can't keep up, and all the weight falls over. I chose to take some time to rest and recover. When we pushed ourselves too much to get as much done as possible to what time remains in our day, it became a vicious habit that we trade off sleep. I did that to cross off one more item on my to-do list. I trade my sleeping time and sleep only at most four hours a day, and It never helps. My allergies got worst. My lack of sleep extinguishes the grit to work on things that matter most. Instead of helping me, my body felt exhausted to do the simplest things.
Doing more is doing less at once.
Having control over the 24 hours I have each day allows me to be attentive to where I am spending my time. Naturally, we felt tempted to do more things to maximize our time. We judge productivity by the quantity of the task and chores accomplished. As a result, we failed to see the bigger picture that quality is better than quantity when we do things that matter most. The illusion of counting accomplishments and crossing out tasks from our to-do list influences us to take more and more at once. We can generate more value for whatever things we do in life when we do less at once and do it the best we can. It necessitates our devotion, consistency, and unwavering dedication.
When we try to accomplish too many things at once, we risk spreading ourselves too thin and never creating meaningful results. Over the past months, I was juggling work, graduate studies, and content creation. I managed my time well, but when the typhoon came, everything changed. My routine was disruptive. I had too many work backlogs. My research does not produce the result I wanted. I wrote content, but every time left unfinished. I was doing more and more things at once. The new routine slowly became toxic. Stress was too high, and I have countless times about burnout.
Trying to accomplish too much at once depletes us too fast. I am living testament to that. I was burning my candle at both ends or emptying my tank by puncturing many holes at once. It is toxic and will not be better. I felt drained far too quickly, without having accomplished good results. At the end of a very hectic routine, we become less productive. If we continue that, we end up burnout or loss the grit we have. Remember that we can only do too much at once. We better do less to have done more.
Life doesn't have a rewind but has a pause button.
Our lives become too hectic because of the pressure to earn and so that we can keep up with society's alarmingly rapid speed. We need to work more and do more at once to keep up, but we fail to see that it is not good. We felt exhausted, and productivity became an all-time low as if we were only there to do work for work's sake. I experienced it first hand. I took more than what I chew that I am now ripping the after-effects to date, grit slowly dying.
We need frequent pauses in our life. I hit the pause button every time I am about to burn out, but recently, I was unable to take a vacation. I tried to disrupt my vicious routine by going for a walk or enjoying a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. When we work for long hours, it is critical to have some break, and our body will thank us for that. We take pauses in our lives to promise ourselves to reflect on what matters most. Moving away for a bit is not quitting, but it is about self-reflection and what matters most when we move forward. It is a way to cleanse our thoughts from the toxicity of our routines. We start over with a fresh mindset towards our goals.
Life itself is unpredictable and is a journey. We can create as many plans as we like, but we may wind up going in a different route. Sometimes things don't fall into the right places. No one rushes us to sort out the messiness in our lives. If ugly things happen, then be it. Acceptance is the key, and it will drive us to move forward with a fresh take on life. Accept that life is uncertain and take a break when needed. With how hectic life can be, we should find time to take a break. I already talk much. To end this write-up, remember two things: doing more is doing less at once, and we need to allow ourselves to have a break.
All featured digital illustrations are created by the author.