Tag: busyness

Categories
Mental Health Self Care Society The Internet

Read Notes on a Nervous Planet

Read Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig

The societies we live in are increasingly making our minds ill, making it feel as though the way we live is engineered to make us unhappy. When Matt Haig developed panic disorder, anxiety, and depression as an adult, it took him a long time to work out the ways the external world could impact his mental health in both positive and negative ways. Notes on a Nervous Planet collects his observations, taking a look at how the various social, commercial and technological “advancements” that have created the world we now live in can actually hinder our happiness. Haig examines everything from broader phenomena like inequality, social media, and the news; to things closer to our daily lives, like how we sleep, how we exercise, and even the distinction we draw between our minds and our bodies.

Very casual writing style, like a collection of blog posts (even listicles 😂). I don’t have as much trouble as he does with phone use, but can relate to the overall overwhelming information intake of the internet and the constant marketing pressures. Enjoyed reading through this slowly. Complementary to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

Continue reading “Read Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Categories
Society

People probably used to do a lot of nothing

Bookmarked https://mobile.twitter.com/mnvrsngh/status/1510978995269029888 by manvir singh (Twitter)

In the 1970s & 80s, anthropologists working in small-scale, non-industrial societies fastidiously noted down what people were doing throughout the day. I’ve been exploring the data & am struck by one of the most popular activities: doing nothing. [thread] pic.twitter.com/Y3YuZUU55O

Categories
Getting Shit Done

Self-Sabotaging Success

Liked Losing focus? There are reasons you derail your progress – Jessica Abel by Jessica Abel (Jessica Abel)

Your hyper-productivity is burning you out, and you’re losing focus on projects you’ve left on the back-burner for ages. Here’s how to get back on track.

Heide said she’d been known to derail herself when she was facing success because it was too scary. When things go well, you start to wonder, what if this really works? Then what? And so to block out those thoughts, she overcommits herself to other stuff.

For me, when I’m working my way through a new project that has a lot of unknowns, I feel this kind of floaty anxiety…nothing overwhelming, but I feel like I’m on the edge of a void, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. So I’m looking for an anchor.

The anchor I often grab is doing work that helps other people quickly, so that they shower appreciation on me.

(Emphasis mine.)

Both of these ring true for me! I just realized the other day that I was considering starting a big project at the same time I’m finally getting ready to self publish!

I think there’s some psychology to dig into here and with my feelings the other day about finding it easier to make things for other people than do them just for myself. Caring less about what other people think is one of my guidelines for myself, and I also want to work on seeking less external validation.

Categories
Mental Health Personal Growth

The Value in Empty Time

Quoted On empty time and not feeling crammed by Madeleine Dore (Extraordinary Routines )

Detecting my own restlessness the last few weeks, I’ve tried to pay attention to this theme of empty time. It seems to keep returning, in conversations for this podcast, in books I’m reading, in conversations with friends.

Yutori means having the time and space—and even the resources—to do, with a sense of ease, whatever it is you’d like to do. Plus a bit. That’s the important part: plus a bit.

Yutori isn’t exactly empty time, but it’s enough playroom, enough elbow-room to be who we’d like to be.

— Madeleine Dore

I’ve been really busy at work the last few weeks, and have no time for buffer space, for breathing. Other colleagues I’ve met seem to be like this all the time, running at 110% capacity, no time to do anything that’s not already on their work plan. That’s not how I like to work. I like to have space for kismet, for opportunities to partner with others, for new ideas, for reflection and assessment, for coordination with colleagues that may not yield anything for me but helps them.

I think of the idea I heard about eating to only 90% fullness. That extra 10% of flex space yields the most interesting and enjoyable parts of my job.

I feel this, too, in my personal creative life. I have more projects than I could ever hope to finish, but also don’t have enough time or energy to finish those I am working on. Some more opportunity for picking priorities, and being satisfied with less.

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. … the most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything, whatsoever.

— May Sarton

Brings me back to this question from Jocelyn K. Glei I’ve been working on for the past two years: who are you without the doing?

These spare, empty minutes in between the doing of our days can be where we find ourselves.
— Madeleine Dore