How we get out of bed in the morning foretells the day ahead. Today, I woke up with a sigh, rolled back and forth, and hugged my blanket like a needy lover. Then, as inevitable as the sunrise, my conscious mind congregated, raising a barrage of tasks I must complete. I have to work out, write for two hours, and work for three. In a matter of seconds, they startled me out of bed.
Five minutes later, I sank into the sofa. Again, my tasks came knocking at my door, not giving me two minutes to rest, this time with two new friends: shame and ineptitude. They pressured me into working out.
After the shower, I opened my laptop and stared at it, knowing very well I needed to write. This time my willpower was depleted. So, when the anxiety rose, I used the only thing left: procrastination. The following hours were a charade of over-indulgence in food, social media, and television.
By noon, I was burned out. I needed rest, but more than that: I needed a change.
The Dark Side of Productivity
In an anxiety-inducing competitive world, productivity promises safety and success. The underlying belief is that the more we get done, the more ahead we will be. While it does make logical sense, it traps us in an eternal race.
In a day timeframe, it results in incapacity and disappointment, for we could have always done more. In a longer timeframe, it depletes us and makes us cynical. We get so caught up in doing and moving that we forget where we want to be and why.
For example, consider a student on the verge of an exam period. We can imagine a sliver of the stress he carries: his friends studying day and night, making him feel behind; his life vision blocked by an obstacle; his traumatic beliefs that love and belonging come from achievement, making the thought of failure paralyzing.
Since he cannot bear all that pressure—most of which is unconscious—he uses productivity like a fight response. He charges right into the action. His willpower, fuelled by fear, is enough to sit down and open the course notes. But he can bearly concentrate; all his energy goes into stifling his procrastination. He ends the day exhausted and despaired, only to do it all again tomorrow.
Work and the Practice of Love
We all have heard the cliché advice to find work that we love. It is so weary that we roll our eyes even reading it. We understand the benefits of it: we will feel better in the process and produce better results. But we lack the foundation and pragmatics of finding and maintaining that passion.
Freud said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness,” I believe those overlap. The fundamentals of love remain true whether they concern a relationship or a career. Those include: evoking patience, concentration, and effort; being vulnerable; giving without expecting to get; loving the day-to-day.
Art can teach us a lot about it. The painter takes a scene we have become accustomed to and bored of and sheds new light on it; we again feel awe for something we have taken for granted. In work and relationships, we need to fall in love again and again, admiring the fine details that sparked our passion in the first place. Each time our love becomes more mature, more gentle, more intimate. We get closer to the universal ideal of love. This is an active process.
True love is when the consideration for the self vanishes in the light of grace, and we devote ourselves to good. We cannot comprehend that—and that is part of the marvel.