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I started writing this post yesterday.

Between writing I drifted into a variety of other activities: browsing YouTube, reading Substack posts, looking for ideas on Pinterest. Writing down a few thought in my notebook. As individual pursuits these aren’t so much of a problem but lately I found myself more prone to try and complete multiple things. Doing one thing and then combining it with another activity. It ends up creating a poor result.

How did we get here?

The idea of “busy = productive”. At work this notion is driven into everyone. Staying busy, even with nonsensical work, is the prime indicator of productivity. Slowly but surely this drifts into our hobbies. If you don’t take X photos or publish X posts per certain time frame you don’t ‘succeed’. This floats into your life outside of these spheres. If you aren’t watching, writing, doing something – anything, you might feel bored. Wondering why the rest and downtime you wanted to badly is feeling empty?

For many people this type of experience is their day to day life. I know it is for me. Having coffee this morning I discussed it with a friend and my brother and we all came to the same conclusion – it feels like there are not enough time to get things done and we are all overwhelmed.

Yet – people who lived before us, still had the same 24 hours a day. Same days in a month. Same time in a year. How is it that we cannot manage it better, with all of our “time management” tools?

How do you fight this?

Sacrifice is something to consider. Giving up something. It might mean once a week you don’t write. You don’t take photos. It might mean shifting something into a different timeslot.

Everything feels as if it is important. Everything has a deadline. It needs to be done now. Clients & customers. Orders to be shipped. It is almost as if we take this as a badge of honor. When I hear someone talking about how busy their day is and how much they have to get done I look for the sadness in their eyes and I think to myself:

Is this how you WANT to live life?

There might be certain instances where you feel this is warranted. The hustle culture, the urge to achieve FIRE. Everything getting more expensive so we work harder to earn more money. We are super aware of our own mortality and it chases us somewhere in the back of our minds. Looking at this, I think for many people there might be an unhappiness with the state of their lives. Nothing wrong with this, we all want to progress but perhaps we are seeing more and more people “succeeding”. I say “succeeding” because it looks like something we want and we can’t all do the things like quit our day jobs, live in a van, build chairs or take photos for a living.

Based on the successes of others’ we put ourselves down. Look at how our lives don’t measure up to the new ideals.

To answer my own question: How do you fight this? Lately, I try to take things easy. If I can take photos today – it’s a win. If I can do something I enjoy today – it’s a win. On the days where I can’t due to any reason – I try to focus on something I already finished. I do more planning (even though I shouldn’t because that tends to perpetuate the cycle) – set aside some time, often doing things only a week or two after I planned them.

On certain days I try to do something completely different. No photos, no writing. I might watch another movie. Read books. On these days I tend to avoid the internet because a lot of my problems stem from an overload of information directed into my brain.

tl;dr

Take breaks. Break routine. Routinely do something which allows you to escape the rat race and avoid creating a rat race for yourself. The photos in this post is from yesterday when we had a braai. The burger and décor photos are from this morning when I made a long overdue visit to a local nursery / coffeeshop. Looking forward to spending more time in this relaxed atmosphere.

Thanks for reading : )