We are living in a hectic world in which we sometimes feel we are simply being pushed through every experience of our daily life, without feeling present at every moment of the day. Sometimes it feels that we are just trying to keep up with whatever it’s going on in the world, without even being able to grasp what we are doing. We try to fill in the gaps: buying the latest thing from whatever we think we need, connections with more people (or virtual connections for that matter), filling time with what we think is necessary. So, why are not we doing enough?
We often fall into the trap of always working harder, keep going for longer or we would be a failure and we would fall behind the trend. We want the edge; we want to get ahead. And this concept applies even to leisure. We want to make the most of our “free time”; accomplish things that we believe will be beneficial to us in the long run: watching the latest series to have new conversation starters with our friends, watching the latest game of the Raptors, dining at the new restaurant around the corner. It almost feels like we should learn to take time off from our free time.
Productivity is something we spend so much time trying to focus on, build on and achieve, but to what end, why are we trying to be productive in the first place? Perhaps we are afraid of spending time alone. Sometimes we are scared by having so much time on our hands and not knowing what to do with it. Since when is having a nice dinner by ourselves is something to laugh about? Afraid to take a moment to think and say “stop”, and enjoy the silence for a while. Taking time to reflect and work in our peace of mind is something we neglect and do not even consider. The greatest growth comes through the recovery of the effort previously made, so we need our own time.
Perhaps society plays the most important role in the way we spend our time. Perfectionism is the main incentive; every time we scroll through Instagram, we see the newest iPhone, or when we realized someone knows a JavaScript framework you have not even heard of, we have a preconceived notion that we have to have/know it all, that our lives need to be perfect. Achieving what we think we need takes up a lot of space in our minds, so it makes us spend a lot of time doing what we can to achieve it. Although wanting these things is not a bad thing but when our sole purpose depends on it, we are predestined to never be satisfied and consequently not be productive.
On the whole, have we even asked ourselves what is the big rush. Have we considered that it is just not enough time to do it all anyway? The more we think about productivity the more we need to take care of ourselves by taking care of our time. Taking care for ourselves should be productive enough, we need to find tranquility by living with simplicity and modest pleasures, because being present in the moment and enjoying the process does not take that much.