rhythm of crazy weeks

I saw this meme the other day again, and it said something along the lines of “College is just four years of saying ‘yeah this week is crazy for me’ and then you graduate.” It’s funny because it’s true.

But, luckily, I have become less stressed recently with most of the big things out of the way. I did really well on my GRE, and I did secure a somewhat solid internship for the coming summer. I complain a lot about my current situation, whether it be on my blog or to my friends, but I think I will be okay at the end of the day and I’m honestly happy about that.

One of the things I like to say to people when they ask is, “school is school,” and it holds true here too. Every week in school feels pretty crazy––there’s a million responsibilities to take care of, I always feel like there’s a major assignment or exam coming up, and there’s always that one class where you’re just like ugh this is such bs (cough fun dies). But, after 2+ years of college, there’s a certain rhythm to the craziness that you can then start to anticipate: trying to cram a pset deadline doesn’t induce as much stress as it once did, losing points bc of random bs doesn’t affect your happiness/self-esteem nearly as much, and you just accept the fact that once midterm season starts, it’s not going to end until you’re packing for winter break.

eustress (again)

Life can be crazy busy, but that’s actually the best place to be. Staying in this state of “eustress” is sustainable and actually optimal. Don’t feel bad about not doing more if doing more entails putting yourself in a state of stress––again, one of the things I like to say, which applies to a wide variety of situations is: “what can you do?” If you’re doing all you’re capable of doing in a sustainable manner, then ultimately that’s all you can do––pushing yourself beyond this point will cause you to accomplish less in the long run.

There are certain moments in one’s year where you have to “sprint”––for me personally, I just completed a spring in regards to recruiting/GRE. These sprints can definitely be beneficial to your goals in the long term if you need this short period of intensely working in order to secure a particular milestone. However, something that I’ve had to pay attention to is the duration of these sprints. Just like running irl, if you’re sprint really hard, you better hope that you’re only sprinting for a short amount of time. If you’re forced to sprint for a long time, you should consider dropping some other things such that the demand on yourself is not as great. During my GRE/recruiting sprint, I put aside coding on startups/research for that time period because I knew that it would take several months, and I could feel that doing all of it would take too much of a toll on my brain/body.

I really like this analogy of considering your life as a journey where you have to walk/jog/spring through certain obstacles/sections of the course. Everyone has different limitations to how they “run,” and you can definitely increase how much you handle at once by implementing productivity habits, staying healthy both mentally and physically, or increasing mental stamina.

I think I talked about this whole idea in one of my earliest blog posts (I talked about the concept of euestress), but it’s definitely interesting to see how my entire perspective on it has changed. Back then, I was rather obsessed with this pursuit of productivity, and, although it seems like I still am, I think the reasoning behind it has changed a lot.

Back then, deep down, I was holding my high school levels of productivity as the standard and felt that I wasn’t being productive enough. So, I think my fixation on productivity, although on paper was logical, was realistically probably motivated by a feeling of inadequacy when it came to the amount of effort/work I was putting in.

why productive?

During quarantine, I had a random existential crisis where I was like, wait why do I even care about becoming the best version of myself/being productive? Like, is this just a product of living in a capitalist society? *insert ~we live in a society~ vibes.

I sometimes like to think of life as an optimization problem, which doesn’t always work. But, within this mentality, happiness is a really important metric, and I think for general life, being happy is better than not being happy.

I currently view this pursuit of being productive, whether it’s this very blog, random productivity tools that I try with my friends, or random habits that I work to instill, as almost like a fun niche hobby with additional benefits, akin to my recent obession with building mechanical keyboards. Being productive gives me a sense of satisfaction/accomplishment––procrastination has been such a massively complex, unsolvable problem for me that making progress along this front feels really good. Reading about different productivity strategies, building social rapport with friends through trying to be productive together, pushing through resistances while implementing productivity habits––this entire process is actually really fun/rewarding in a weird way. At this point, being productive has become a hobby of its own––ironically, this hobby of productivity is not optimally productive, but that’s fine. Hobbies aren’t meant to be productive––they’re meant to be a fun break from whatever hard/boring but important stuff you actually need to get done.

All of this is disregarding the fact that being productive has very real, tangible benefits in the sense that, well, when you’re productive, you get stuff done that you need to get done. Not doing this causes you to miss some things, and, some of the time, this makes you feel really bad. But, at the end of the day, life does move on, even if you fail certain goals because you were unproductive, so really, I believe the process is a lot more important and if you can make the process fun, then all the benefits are just added on top. “After all, I’m a fisher not a catcher.” (ifykyk)