Life Is Not A Race (So Why Should I Run?)
I am learning the art of living slowly, and I will not fill my newfound space with 10 productivity hacks anytime soon.
Last year, I learned to speed read. I watched a few Youtube videos and listened to an audiobook on speed reading (at 2x speed, of course) and started to rip through books at an astonishing speed. I kept a note on my laptop of the books I had read, just so that I could watch the total number climb each week.
In western culture, it’s a batch of honour to talk about how many books you’ve read. Just like it’s a batch of honour to talk about how many kilometers she ran, how much money he made, how many people liked her last instagram posts.
Personally, I’ve been on a journey of unwinding myself from this obsession with more. There were some races that intentionally opted out of in my twenties. I refused to run the rat race, or climb the corporate ladder. However, unknowingly, my psyche latched onto travel as my tracker for success. The more countries I traveled to, the more exotic they were and the more daring each trip was, the “more” I became.
Over the last three years of living in the city, I’ve been practicing the art of cultivating contentment. I’m learning how to live at a pace that is humane, kind and wise, not competitive.
Instead of pushing harder, I am practicing the art of just doing what is infront me of and letting it be enough.
My Ongoing Relationship With Productivity
Yesterday, I downloaded an e-book version of Laura Vanderkam’s latest book, The New Corner Office. I’ve put a number of Laura’s books onto my recommended books list as they have helped me a lot since moving back to the city. She writes about time management and productivity, but there must something in her spirit that resonates with mine because I’ve read almost every one of her books.
The New Corner Office is perfectly timed for this new era of mass remote work. Sometimes I get an urge to immediately devour a book and that happened last night. It’s a short book, so that gave me even more reason to down it in one shot.
Perhaps in another blog, I’ll share a summary of my takeaways from the book, but for todays, I want to unpack how productivity and time management intersect with finding the right pace for living.
As I read The New Corner Office, I could feel this urge in me to attack my Google Calendar with a steel hammer. I should reconfigure my schedule and get more done!
Creativity & Life
Earlier this year, I went cold turkey on creating videos and posting on Instagram. I surprised myself by how easy it was to stop. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks, but now it’s six months later and I have almost no desire to come back on social media.
The truth is that I’m enjoying not having to do the extra work of creating content. I do it in my day job and it’s getting boring. I feel like I have much more mental space, and I’m enjoying it! Why should I start creating all this extra work for myself by editing photos, writing lengthy captions and spending hours creating a 6 minute video? I’m quite happy never checking my social media accounts. If it wasn’t for my jobs, I’d probably delete the apps altogether.
Yet, in the last two weeks, I’m having thoughts of how can I share some of the dozens of stories, memories, photos and lessons I’ve accumulated since the spring. Are these random thoughts that I should squash away? Or are these a sign?
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Time will tell, but for now, I’m acutely conscious of not bursting into a creative avalanche. The peace, space and stillness that I’ve found from not doing any side creative projects is too precious to give up with mindful consideration.
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