If You Are Feeling Unproductive, Read This
Illustration by @muchcoffeeman via The New Yorker Magazine
Just like many other people, as soon as I found out that I had to quarantine and complete my semester online, I had a teeny tiny breakdown. But I shook it off and decided I was going to make the best of the situation. So, I made a mental list of all the goals that I wanted to accomplish by the time I went back to “normality”. Not only did I decide I wanted to learn how to speak two languages perfectly, but I also wanted to do a 6-week-long graphic design course, as well as get an internship for the summer and/or fall. Additionally, I set the goal of working out for at least one hour a day, because I figured this was the perfect time to get a six-pack. Keep in mind, I also have six exams that I have to study for, and three of them have the ability to make me cry like a baby as soon as I think of them. But I was determined to seize this opportunity and be productive.
A couple of weeks went by, and one day I realised I had not accomplished any of the things that were on that list. So far, my biggest achievement was making that trendy whipped coffee that is all over the internet. And it didn’t even taste good. Suddenly I felt so useless, and like I was not on top of my game, unlike everyone else seemed to be. And the fact that I didn’t get accepted to my dream internship, because of the pandemic, made me feel even worse. Funnily enough, going on LinkedIn started to feel like going on Instagram. You know how people tell you to take a break from social media because you want to avoid having unrealistic expectations about yourself? Well, that happened to me with LinkedIn. As lame as it sounds, I started fantasising about what it would feel like to be, well, not rejected. I could not log in without comparing myself to everyone else’s success. I did not understand how people were managing to get their life together, meanwhile, the only thing I was doing was compiling rejection emails on my inbox. I felt that everyone was moving forward, while I was only moving backwards. I felt that I was not being productive enough.
Illustration by @lila__ash via The New Yorker Magazine
It wasn’t until I actually took the time to analyse the entire situation, that I realised how blind I was being. First of all, of course, companies were not going to hire me right now. Their main priority is surviving the pandemic, not hiring a 20-year-old to bring them coffee every hour. Second of all, I was putting too much on my plate too fast. And the reason why I was doing this? Because I fell in the trap that we all fall in at some point in our life. A trap known as “hustle culture”.
Hustle Culture is a movement that has been very influential in the past decade, among Millennials and Gen Z. It is a movement that is obsessed with ambition, striving, and working hard 24/7 in order to make your life meaningful. Recently, a lot of people have been referring to this movement as “burnout culture”, because, in a way, it makes us think that if we don’t work hard every day, we are nobodies. And this is exactly what happened to me. Now, I am not saying that I turned into one of those people that say rise and grind when they wake up, and that like to refer to food as “brain fuel”. Nor that I bought myself one of those self-help books that promise you will be a billionaire in five years if you follow their advice. The ones that usually include in the cover a comment like “Over five million people bought this book”, just to remind you that you are the only lazy person that didn’t. Anyway, what I mean is that I was blinded by the idea of working harder, and not smarter. And so, I decided to make a change.
Illustration by @maddiedai via The New Yorker Magazine