I used to have a no Wi-Fi policy on flights. Over the last few years, I used airplane time to journal, read, think, and sleep.
I’ve broken that rule on every flight I’ve taken since moving to Austin. Flights have become work time.
The state of my brain has changed quite a bit over the last few months. It feels agitated - so occupied by the next task at hand that it hasn’t been able to feel or rest. On commands to relax, breathe, and observe, it revolts. Rather - it’s not really able to.
I recognize that the way I’m going through life right now looks a lot like my college days. At that time, I didn’t know any better. I thought the point of school was to work hard and get a new job. So, you dive into clubs and classes and work really hard for the outcome that you want.
The last few years have taught me something a little bit different. That life’s outcome isn’t directly tied to scholarly output. Work is a mechanism to stay intellectually stimulated and earn a living, but that life is about so much more. For prosperity, all distinct thematic interests should have bounds.
Terminality
What's most different so far between my previous job and current one is my inability to feel completeness.
In the past, I’ve always been able to feel like I could tie some sort of a bow on my tasks at the end of the day. I owned my calendar and could scope/plan for work as I saw fit. I could leave my work behind when I turned off my computer and be happy with what I accomplished.
At my current role, I might walk into work planning to finish A and B. During the day, I get pulled into X, Y, Z, and by the end of the day, I’ve completed X and Y, but now have Z, A, and B on my backlog.
The work I own is foundational to efficiency across the business and thus impacts a lot of people. Every day, I get new requests for “highest priority” things to work on. It means that the important things on my to-do list constantly get trumped by other people’s most important items.
The outcomes are:
I have very little agency over how I spend my time.
I’m working really hard and getting a lot done, but it doesn’t feel cohesive, and it never feels like it’s enough. There’s always something high-priority left on the to-do list.
I think fundamentally, I’m having a hard time tying any bows at the end of each day.
Finding Peace
I can tell that there’s a little bit of conflation between solutions in my head. On one hand, there is a thread about creating mental space from my work. When I leave the office, take a deep breath, and detach, as to give the mind some time to breath. There’s a separate thread about finding a sense of completion to the working portion of my day. They are related, but not the same.
Ultimately, what I’m solving for is a little bit of relaxation time for the mind to quit thinking, and just exist. My solution head goes to meditation, breath work, or just quiet alone time in nature - all of which have become harder for me since coming to Austin.
While I have some ideas, I don’t really have an answer to this one yet. I expect to try some new strategies for both problems to see what helps. I would also love to hear how each of you achieve tranquility despite having hectic work lives.
Interestingly, my mom recently shared this semi-scientific lecture about the neuroscience of chanting/meditation. It made me reflect on how bad we are at measuring the state of the brain in the day to day. While diabetics can use a CGM to give them feedback on how foods impact them, EEGs are still too expensive and inaccessible to achieve similar with how our behaviors impact our brains. Imagine how much more methodical and scientific approaches to mental health could become with access to better data.
At the end of the day, I know I’m going to need to work on giving my brain more opportunities for rest and tranquility. I’ve never been especially good at it, given my chaos seeking energy, but over the years, I’ve found that I can find peace in nature and stillness in motion.
Momentarily, there’s still the one easy thing that always seems to help - bearing some teeth and lightening those eyes.
Don’t forget to smile today :)
Thejas
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