“Slow down everyone, you’re moving too fast!”
There’s often an element of our lives we can be unhappy about and wish to change. Sometimes, this element is an obligation. For example, we all have to earn money. But we can decide the conditions of how we do. Outside only the extreme cases, we have the ability to change our situation when things get too much. If you let somebody control your life and make decisions for you once, they’ll do it again, until your life can be unrecognisable.
The fact that we wish to break free of these chains holding us back can lead us to rush.
Problems With The Rush
“Do not confuse effort with results”
We can work ourselves into the ground and see our engagement drop, our sales decrease, or even our connections with our coworkers dwindle. We get so caught up in the numbers. Trust me, I love the numbers, but how they affect our minds leads to us running a never-ending race.
We compare ourselves to others. We see a newsletter that has accumulated more followers in less time. A newsletter that went paid and quickly gained attention, much more than yours. But you’ve been working so hard. “Why isn’t that me?” Substack is a wonderful place where everyone raises each other up. Other social media platforms promote a sense of false comparison as we sugarcoat our lives to be better than they are. Nobody sits on a beach every day looking like a million dollars. Most days are tough! But looking online can distort how successful other people are, and this can demotivate and even anger us sometimes. The key, in my opinion, is to limit your social media time, and to “be on the right side of it”. I sign out of my personal social media accounts, so I have to add the action of signing in if I wish to look. While performing this action, I can often second guess why I’m even signing in at all. Instead of doom scrolling, why not call a friend, go for a walk, or grab a beer? If you don’t feel like leaving the house, what makes you feel truly relaxed? We have a tendency to relax, get bored doing nothing, and scroll social media for hours. It’s only when we escape our social media doom hole that we realise we can’t remember a single thing we gazed at in the last hour. Disconnect from your technology, and re-enter reality. Build connections with others without tech, and relax without tech. I guarantee you’ll naturally compare yourself to others less, you’ll live in the present, and focus more on yourself and how you can personally improve your life.
We always have problems; one arises as another is solved. That’s life. If we turn ourselves into problem-solving machines, we rush to solve our problems thinking one day we won’t have any. Sorry to break it to you, but even if you have a very large problem that you solve, many small ones can take its place. To counter this, we have to change how we think of problems, otherwise, we rush to solve the never-ending problems list.
Love the journey, not the destination. This is one I’m currently working on. Our attitudes towards our online metrics shift as we grow. For the first two months of Geopolitics Explained, I was writing to nobody. I was writing for myself, to learn through teaching. That’s what I still do today, so why do I beat myself up when I don’t have as good a month as last month? This highlights the importance of a long-term method of thinking. If I focus on years, not days, then I’ve pursued something consistently that I thought I never would, and I love doing it. Sure, there are down days, where I’m burned out, or I wrote a piece that I didn’t like. But over a long time frame, we should all be proud that we’re putting ourselves out there, and pursuing our goals because we love it, with no destination in mind.
As we rush through life, we focus less on the present. We’re distracted by our surroundings and almost enter a survival-like environment. Our busy schedules require us to rush to complete our tasks, so we can create a life for ourselves we wish to have. To solve all our problems overnight.
The two most important factors of any pursuit are consistency and quality. With discipline, consistency comes, and we form habits. One day, we can’t imagine our schedules without this pursuit of our goals.
But if we become a victim of the rush, our quality can drop. I’m hugely susceptible to this, thinking producing more will get more eyes on my work, and as a result, I’ll grow more. This seems to be a good strategy, but the quality of my work can drop dramatically if I rush to the finish line.
How To Beat The Rush?
I’ve turned off all notifications related to engagement from my Substack that are sent to my emails. I’ve had them blocked on my phone for social media apps for a while, otherwise, that comparison to others creeps in and the rush takes hold as we fight to keep up with others. The app that blocks access to specific apps for set periods is Opal for anybody interested, and it’s an absolute lifesaver. One app I do keep open is my emails. Maybe that’s where my problem lies and I should add my emails to Opal, but a second strategy that has helped hugely has been to disable any subscriber gained, likes, or comments emails I receive. I still see them on the Substack website on my dashboard, but I don’t even consider if I’ve had any engagement on my work. I’ve pivoted the purpose of my work to be for me. It’s not for growth, or anybody else, or to reach an unreachable destination.
Take a break. We’re not robots. We shouldn’t wait for the point of burnout to finally give ourselves a break. We need time to not use our brains and bodies, and to just be. Have work pursuits and hobbies that allow you to play. To slide back into that childlike curiosity of your youth.
Live in the present. Look around every 20 minutes as you sit at your desk. Note something about your surroundings that’s changed. Perhaps the sun shines through your window. The wind has picked up. The birds chirp in the tree. A car that was parked outside your window has left. Flow state is celebrated as the maximum level of productivity, and overall is a good thing. In my eyes, it’s a sign that you’re pursuing your purpose. But as we dive into our mind palaces for hours on end, we can be susceptible to spiral in the rush towards our goals. So, while writing, or pursuing anything, live in the present moment. Your pursuit is for you, not anybody else. So treat it that way. Reduce your opportunities to compare yourself to others and produce work that you’re proud of with no time limits. Over time, you’ll find the quality of your performance grows, and doesn’t decline as a consequence of the rush.
Give yourself enough time to pursue what you need, and schedule rest time into your schedule too! I used to write my pieces on the day I released them. Obligations later in the day often cut my writing time short. Again, quality dropped as a result. We have to balance consistency with quality, otherwise, we hinder our own success. Quality comes by limiting the rush and controlling your schedule. An overfilled schedule is a natural precursor to the rush. Recognise this, and brutally choose which tasks to pursue in life. There is enough time, we just can’t do everything. So choose a few things and do them well.
We can also use mindfulness exercises to feel more restful. Meditation, gratitude, or something as simple as a walk for some fresh air.
Give yourself some time to slow down this weekend, and carry that into next week, and your life in general. As the stoics say, what we’re really rushing towards is death. I don’t think that is on anybody’s list of goals.
This is a great reminder!