Redefining Productivity

Most of my life has been spent thinking about the future. Even when I am embracing the present, there’s a little whisper suggesting I get to work. This has made me restless. In high school, I was thinking about college. In college, I was hoping for a job. During my corporate job, I was weighing the options of moving up in the company or quitting to travel. All while constantly trying to maintain a healthy body and mindset, and maybe accumulate another hobby or two. My brain is quite literally an exhausting place to be. No wonder I smoke so much weed.

I have always labeled this restlessness as a byproduct of being highly productive, thus seeing it as a benefit. Until I realized the amount of stress and strain it was putting on my life. Until I realized how uncomfortable I was with sitting and doing nothing. Until I realized that I tied my self-worth and ability to relax to my level of output. Breaks and satisfaction only came after the tasks were complete.

This is when I decided to redefine what productivity means to me. Being productive makes me feel successful with my days, so the two terms are interchangeable in my vocabulary. Like a lot of people, I associate productivity with accomplishments like working out, cleaning the house, doing my homework, and having a job. Since these are all fair measurements of success, I decided to add to the list instead of eliminating. A good night’s sleep, a nice conversation with a stranger, donating some clothes, a belly full of tasty food, waking up without an alarm, feeling the sun on my skin, being content, living in the present moment. These are things that SHOULD feel naturally successful, yet something about simple pleasures has never been taught as such. The world tells us these are things you can have only after you’ve spent your life achieving and accomplishing, only after a day with a full itinerary.

I think that’s a load of crap. If I can’t enjoy something so simple without feeling restless, always wondering what more I should be doing with my life, what’s the point? If I can’t wake up late and have a slow morning without feeling guilty, what’s the point? Why the rush?

The moment I decided that it’s up to me to choose which moments feel productive and which deserve guilt, that’s when I took control back. Western society glamorizes a week full of mind, soul, and bodily grind with a weekend full of poisons to lessen the stress, while simultaneously looking down upon taking a gap year to figure yourself out. It seems so backwards to me. What if I take control back? What if I choose to feel successful after making someone laugh, after giving someone directions that looked confused on the street, after expressing myself authentically, after enjoying my breakfast in silence, after having a hard conversation with a loved one to strengthen our relationship? I can choose peace and simplicity over rushing from one task to the next. I can choose to put my own well-being first. If success only comes after extreme stress and anxiety, is it really success?

I am in charge of my own life. I refuse to let society or other humans decide how I should spend my time or how I should feel about it. This is my life. The only person who needs to agree with how it looks is me. Instead of asking myself how much work I got done in a day, I now ask: Was I happy? Did I encourage anyone positively? Did I smile? Was I honest with myself? These are the things that truly matter; these are my measurements of a successful life.