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January 26 - February 7, 2022
We may recognize that the pursuit of productivity is making us miserable and yet have no idea how to fill our days instead. Even as we live through the global health, social, and climate crises of our time, many of us still feel bad for not doing enough or doing it right—and so pile another layer of guilt on ourselves.
The pandemic has shaken up our days in varying ways, but one thing it has taught many of us is that we are always more adrift than we think.
But for the most part, being a fallible human means we need to recognize our own tendency to dawdle, to dash, to buffer the doing, whether out of necessity or habit—and maybe we don’t need to add a layer of guilt, anxiety, or shame to that. Perhaps, instead of trying to optimize, we can learn to reroute the guilt, anxiety, and shame we encounter on days like these and accept ourselves as imperfect people simply experiencing the day.
Instead, when we create space for our own imperfection, for the messiness in our days, we might just get the best out of them.
We’ve mistaken doing things—being “productive”—as the measure of a day well spent, when really that’s just one of many by-products of living well.
Perhaps we don’t want to be more productive in our days, but more fecund—that is, more capable of producing new growth, but not always in producing mode. Seen in this light, our days are like fertile gardens: a place to plant, to sow, to weed, to prune, to pick, to compost, depending on the season.
To be fecund, we need to be nourished. This view shifts the emphasis away from the things we accomplish and toward the things that feed us: how well we have slept, how dedicated we are to something, how kind, how assertive, how generous, how well we treat the people we love, how much we learn, how resilient we are. We so often overlook these parts of the day, but it’s the very mulch that we need to yield growth.
Our days don’t need to be optimized but simply occupied—that is, lived in, tended to, renewed.
It took asking people about the everyday reality of their lives for me to realize we can’t expect to re-create the same recipe when we don’t have same ingredients.
The minutiae of our daily lives differ for each of us, yet we often compare ourselves with others—and wind up feeling worse.
If there was a resounding insight I gained after sifting through people’s days, it’s that nobody has all the answers; nobody knows what they’re doing; and everybody is looking at everybody else, trying to keep up, adjusting where necessary. We all stumble; we all make mistakes; we all have days where we didn’t do the thing.
That’s how we get to know all sides of the fallible, messy, imperfect human we are—instead of waiting to be told what to do, we make it up as we go along and keep reshaping the parts of our day.
If the conversations I’ve had have taught me one thing, it’s that our cracks are what make us far more relatable and interesting and form the most beautiful mosaic. The part that doesn’t always get things done. The part that wants to change. The part that’s trying to untangle itself from always needing to change something. The part that is still figuring things out. They’re the parts that remind us there is so much more to the day than doing.
Productivity tells us to live sequentially, but our days rarely unfold in perfect order. Not only does each day vary, but we also vary within them. We are constantly shifting, creating, and re-creating parts of ourselves.
Creativity isn’t reserved for a select few—we all have access to this innately human trait.
Creativity is present in the ways we get to know ourselves, express ourselves, question what we believe in, discover what we want—it’s in how we live our lives.
“To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”
If we don’t play with what we have at our disposal, how can we find enjoyment in the mundanity of our daily lives? We’re so used to the wonder that is a day that we call it ordinary. Perhaps reminding ourselves of what an extraordinary thing it is to have a day—a day where anything can happen—is a better goal than trying to optimize and render it perfect.
Each tumble in our days is an opportunity to learn, so we do not fall so hard the next time.
Time is a luxury that many people don’t have—and so is a routine.
If we didn’t have the rut, we would remain on autopilot, unchanging, unalert to new possibilities.
where you stumble, there lies your treasure. Ruts are often a prequel to change—something nudges us when we are in the rut, and we find our way out.
We might start out doing fewer things so we can rest but over time find it harder to do anything at all. Withdrawing from the world can make it difficult to return to it.
moving patiently out of the rut requires we do something different—we must move when we have stagnated.
it is when we remain open to shifting and adjusting that we eventually find ourselves in a new position where we find a rhythm once more.
This, to me, is what self-care looks like. Because caring is not about fixing completely; rather, it’s a work in progress of fostering, trusting, and shifting position as necessary.
“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there’s no flow, stay still.”
often when we accept ourselves, we are more likely to get the best from ourselves.
Taking away the self-judgments allows us to look at what we need to thrive instead of what we need to change.
The net, I’ve learned, is something I found myself resistant to—when I tell myself I must do something, I find that I don’t want to do it. This is often referred to as psychological reactance, or the negative knee-jerk reaction to being told what to do, even if we are the ones telling ourselves to do it.
But even if different parts of our days must incorporate things we have to do, we might find the best way to approach the day is to wriggle within the bits we can.
“Being flexible with times and routines helps me feel in control of my life.”
it’s possible to shrug it off when things don’t fit in their allotted hour, rather than spiral for not doing the thing.
place of elaborate routines, many people I’ve interviewed create anchors that can be flexible within the day.
“portable routine”
Our days improve not because things are done in perfect order, but when we are present to whatever is in them.
We might set aside an untouchable day each month to do something that fulfills us, or create a pocket in the day just for that.
We might block out a night each week in our calendar to make solitude a recurring event.
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
Time feels slippery in part because our perception of time changes. Time itself is a measure of change. It is not passing by us; we are passing by it, comparing the moment before and the moment after.
In other words, the greater number of new memories we create, the longer an experience—a day—will seem in hindsight.
Perhaps, instead of filling time, we can inspect whether what we fill it with creates a sense of fulfillment.
Rather than waiting for the perfect swath of time to arrive, we can also carve it out for ourselves—we can be time-greedy, even, and designate pockets for the things we want to do.
We don’t have to view every moment we don’t spend the way we expected to as a waste—we can simply appreciate the part it played in our life. In a society that emphasizes the productive use of time, we can easily forget that time we enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.
I learned time doesn’t have to be the measure of quality work.
