All of humanities problems stems from mans inability to sit quietly in a room alone - Blaise Pascal
When you can’t measure your worth by promotions or praise, what do you measure it by?
When your calendar isn’t full of meetings, key results, and to-do lists, how do you know if you’re spending your time wisely?
When you’re on sabbatical and building something new, watching your savings dwindle certainly doesn’t feel like winning.
I’ve seen a number of old colleagues over the last week, many of whom I haven’t seen since I left my role in January. If I’m being honest, it made me nervous to see them. When I quit my job, I had, to quote our President, “concepts of a plan.” I had a loose idea about what I would do with all of the time freedom afforded to me. But what had I accomplished? What profound epiphany did I have? How was I going to talk about my growth, when all I had to show for it, at least externally, was my hair that I’ve let run wild since I left?
I remember conversations with those same colleagues before I left. Pretty much every conversation included a “What are you going to do!?” While I had some plans, and ideas of things that needed doing, I felt an overwhelming obligation to fire off an exhaustibly long list of things I was hoping to accomplish in my time off. Every conversation added one or two more things to the list, as if I was attempting to only further impress the next person. There was only one problem. That list wasn’t for me. It was for them.
It took me a few weeks to realize it. While I genuinely wanted to write more, I remember sitting down to write my first piece, and proceeding to pace around the house because:
a) It wasn’t done (I was not on deadline), and
b) I didn’t think it would resonate with anyone.
But I could feel the anxiety creeping in minute by minute. Here I was, unemployed, barely able to produce the one thing I was excited about doing in my time off. I was failing at my own sabbatical.
I had no sense of discipline.
I was lazy.
I was unmotivated.
I’d always said I would get to “the list” if I had more time. And here I was, sitting on a stockpile of unstructured time, and I still couldn’t do any of it.
I couldn’t do it because these things weren’t actually on my list. I felt like I had to write because it represented some “proof of life.” I needed to show I was still contributing something productive to the world. In reality, I caved to external pressures of how I should spend my time. I had lists, and my lists had lists of all the things I SHOULD be doing. I felt the weight of the privilege I’ve been graciously handed. Plenty of people that would kill for the opportunity to take a step back from work, and here I was frittering away my days and hours, forced to sit with my own thoughts.
What is my contribution if I choose rest?
Who am I if don’t have a project I’m working on?
How do I tell people what I do?
It wasn’t until a conversation with my partner that I began to shift my perspective. I shared my anxiety, my sense of failure, and my guilt. Her response was “This is what you wanted and what you planned for for over a year.” She was right.
I was caught on the hamster wheel of success. I was a “doer.” How can I blame myself for walking that path?
When I felt tired, the dopamine hit of a paycheck or bonus would give me a jolt of energy. At the very least, I could use that paycheck or bonus to buy myself something that made me happy.
When I felt hopeless, someone would tell me I was doing a good job.
When I felt lost, the advice I was given was there was always “light at the end of the tunnel.” “It will get easier,” I was told. “You just have to keep pushing through.”
Even when I felt drained or I didn’t feel like I was on the right path, I persisted.
Because without those things, I was just tired, hopeless, and lost.
I had identified long ago, that while my year long goal was to get my business off the ground, I wanted time to sit with uncertainty. I intentionally wanted the first part of my sabbatical to be about doing as little as possible. To make space to learn about myself. To lose track of the to do list. The abundance of time made me uncomfortable, because for the first time in ten years, I was alone with my thoughts. No (or at least fewer) distractions. The “doer” in me couldn’t crank out 20 tasks for clients, or work on a firm project that might get some praise. With nothing to do, I had to sit and listen to what my soul was telling me it wanted.
The last five months have been about learning new metrics for growth. I needed to sit with no list, and to trust my soul to pull me in direction it wants to go. I needed to shed the metrics for what makes me look successful and productive, and learn that sometimes we have to create space for the answers to come to us.
I’ve learned that if we don’t stop and pause to breathe in this moment with the feelings we have, we are only bound to continue to live a life that glorifies external rewards, and we rob ourselves of the ability to measure our own unique personalities and perspectives. If we aren’t quiet, we smother a voice that yearns to guide us on an unexpected path forward.
There is an alternative: the unfashionable but powerful notion of letting time use you, approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history. - Oliver Burkeman