Room To Breathe
I'd articulated my thought so well, and to sit and re-write all?
Oh lord. Here it goes again. But we all know it's going to be totally different.
I've realised that as humans, we love cyclical loops. We start off on a project, fail at v1, build v2, fail at v2, build v3 and so on. And usually at the end, we tend to appreciate how far we've come, tip our hats and ride off into the sunset.
And the counterargument to such spirals is to build systems. The Ali Abdaal's, the Tiago Forte's, the XYZs of the world, creaming on you almost 300 different system-building strategies, each more complicated than the other. And it's not just them, I too tend to create systems, I'm excellent at not adhering to.
And while it took me 700 words to convey this in my previous iteration, this says it clearly. I've diagnosed a chronic problem in myself. I have a chronic condition.
For the love of god, I cannot adhere to systems.
And in hindsight, it just makes sense. Why is it that in both the half-marathons I've run, I don't seem to be able to follow a plan? Why have I managed to complete tasks but not stick to a plan? Why is my abandonment rate so high? Well, it's simply because I just don't seem to take my systems seriously.
Note, it never has, and never was building the system itself. All of that is low-hanging fruit. And no matter how many of the Ali Abdaal, Tiago Forte's retarded systems are, building the system is not an issue. I spent 3 hours on a weekend learning Obsidian. But sticking to it, well, that's been an issue.
Companies, people, work, applications, my abandonment rate has always been high. Yet, this quaint realisation has evaded me. And partly because of how I maybe viewed life too. The problem was always with the software.
'I didn't plan it well enough.'
'I missed a day or two.'
'I doesn't have offline storage.'
'The block system doesn't work.'
And then, I spend my remaining week migrating applications.
The same goes for principles too. Now, morally, I'm very clear on where I stand. My ethics, personally, remain intact. Yet, professionally, they are fluid. And this is but a pure consequence of my overvaluing
a) Myself. b) My Thoughts.
And it's this overindexing on my thoughts that hinders me. Not as a writer, but as an individual. As a writer, this excites me. I thrive in it, even. Yet, once the pen's dropped, reality strikes. And translating it into reality has been a chronic issue.
Here's where I'd say, I'm coming to like room to breathe as a philosophy. A principle. Not limited to professional, not limited to personal. A room to breathe implies not just being patient, but indulging in the task itself. You take a breather to re-engage deeper. It's akin to a diver. You come to the surface just to dive in deeper. To engage further, to sit deeper. With thoughts, with ideas and with concepts.
For me, room to breathe is to realise at a moment -- hey, you're getting restless. You're beginning to rush through the work, and then, pause, assess, breathe and return. It's patience in doing the work. And a room to breathe just doesn't mean doing it 'to take a break'. It's also to allow you to go deeper. It gives you the opportunity to process 'hey, I have X L of oxygen in my tank' I can do deeper. To look around and admire the coral.
A good instance is masters prep. I dove headfirst into GRE prep. Yet, a quick room to breathe allowed me to put together the larger picture. GRE is a core facet, but not the only one. Building a profile is what really matters. And are we there yet? Well, not quite. So we'd need to dive into all of them parallely. This requires a system. Well, then we build it. For me.
And this continues. Right now, as we speak, a host of issues flutter in my mind. 'Can we publish this by 12AM?', 'Oh, bhavi my friend didn't call me?','We might have to go to a movie on Saturday?' and a flutter of questions. I took a step back, cleared my mind and returned. I'm not quite sure whether the next sentence will be the last, but I would've atleast signed off with the confidence that it wasn't a compromised sentence.
So now, I give myself room to breathe. I'm not the fastest learner, I might not be the smartest in the room, but I'm in the room and that's for a reason. So maybe, let me play to my strengths?
Let me bet on myself, and take a breather? Let's not give into self-doubt and take a breather? Let's address all of this but first chalk it out?
To take a breather has really helped me revisit my examination timelines, efforts significantly. Taking a breather prevented me from ordering yesterday, from overusing my phone today and from worrying about my weight. To take a breather is a strength we tend to underplay and to seize that is a key indicator I think I should overindex.