LESSONS I LEARNT FROM BEING BUSY

Hello All (I strongly encourage you to read that line in Jola's voice when she intros ISWIS podcast because that's the tone in which I wrote it 😅)

When writing blogs, I often first have the title in mind and then write the post. But this one is a bit different. I'll get all my thoughts on paper first and then extrapolate what I think the appropriate title is. I might even tell you the point at which I decided what the title should be 😏 

This blog will be like me talking you through what I'm thinking about right now, right as I'm thinking it. Enjoy

Anyways, it's been a MINUTE. How've you been? (I also encourage you to genuinely ask yourself how you've been). 

Let's catch up

Last year when I dusted up this blog and said let's try this again, I did say that I was busier than ever. Well, guess what? I got even busier than that. Which is crazy for me to look back on and imagine, but it's true.

The thing you'd quickly learn about being busy is you cannot do everything at once, and that's ok. Take a page out of how our brain multitasks.

What we call multitasking is simply our brain rapidly shifting between different tasks. We're not doing more than 1 thing at once, just quickly alternating. And that's what having a lot of things to do per time forces you to do.

If you have 10 things to do, you'd probably end up picking 2,3,4 essential things and do those. This is where the economics term "scale of preference" or the English term "prioritization" comes into play. We only have this much time in a day and a limited amount of energy/bandwidth to allocate, so we must pick the most important things to focus on and do those things.

In other words,

Dear all, 

You cannot have it all. At least not all at once.

Sent with thanks,

Life

Unfortunately/fortunately, this blog fell below my line, which is fine. This blog is supposed to be for fun; if I was getting fun elsewhere, spending time on this blog would have taken time from something higher on my scale of preference.

Another thing you'd quickly learn is that our assessment of ourselves is wrong most times. 

You're probably doing better than you think you are, or you're probably doing worse than you think you are.

There were days when I woke up feeling overwhelmed with what I had to do and underwhelmed with how well I was doing. Put differently, I felt I had a lot to do, and I wasn't doing much. Other days, I woke up feeling like... (well, let me stop myself there, I didn't literally wake up feeling like this any more than Beyonce literally woke up like this in 7/11. I mean, something probably happened during those days to wake me up to the realization that I wasn't doing enough). There were other days when I felt like I was doing GREAT! 

Self-perception is such a crazy funny thing.

You could convince yourself that you're not doing enough and therefore act like you're inadequate. You could also convince yourself that you're doing AMAZING and then act confident and do great stuff.

To an extent, we can control our perceptions of ourselves, and to an extent, it controls us.

But I must say, feeling like you've not done enough is not inherently bad or an undesirable feeling to have. Because, on the days/weeks where I felt like I hadn't done enough, I made very intense plans to catch up. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and got down to work to ensure that I got to a point where I felt comfortable with the amount of work I'd done.

On the flip side, feeling like you're doing fantastic can be harmful. Because sometimes, when I felt like I was doing great, I got a bit cocky and started to fall behind on tasks, which led me to feel inadequate.

So you see, it's an endless cycle between feeling great and inadequate that ultimately brings balance. You should be fine as long as you don't tilt too heavily to one side. Yin and Yang.

At this point, I decided that I would call this blog "things being busy taught me" or "lessons of a busy, busy gurllll". Probably will end up going with the former because the latter hmmm, if you read it in an American accent, it means 1 thing, and if read in Pidgin, it means another, so...

Another thought frequently on my mind is that we must play the game of life like an infinite game and a finite game. 

If you've read about Game theory, you're familiar with the concepts of the infinite and finite game, but for those who haven't, here's a grossly oversimplified explanation.

As the name implies, an infinite game is a game that has no ending, infinite. We must live in ways that are sustainable for the long run. You can't realistically sustain working 15-hour days for years on end. You will breakdown. But we also know that as human beings, we have an unknown expiration date. As Billie Eilish sang so beautifully, everybody dies surprise surprise.

We want to empty ourselves of as much value as we can give. Chase and achieve as many dreams as we can. But again, we must find balance.

We must find sustainable ways to do the things we want to be doing for decades. Alternatively, it's ok to do really long-hour days every now and then to complete urgent tasks. It's a push and pull. Yin and Yang. (At this point, I'm thinking, should I call the article Yin and Yang or Balance? I probably decided against it)

Playing the infinite game also calls on you to have patience. And that's another lesson being busy teaches you, patience. 

You want to do everything in 1 day or a few weeks, but you can't. Some tasks will take months before you even find the right angle to approach them from. By week 3, you might find a better way to do what you've been trying to do for 3 weeks but to do it, you'll have to delete everything you've done and start again. Sometimes, you delete and start all over; other times, it's not worth it.

Another thing you learn is you can't always do things faster and better. And the time spent finding the faster and better way to do something is better spent just doing it the slower way. Efficiency is great but is not always efficient to achieve. Seeking efficiency for the long term (infinite game) is often inefficient for the time being (finite game).

I could go on and on but yea, let me stop here with the lessons before you start thinking I'm wise and shiiiiiit

I have been doing some really exciting things that I'll share when I feel the time is right. I've now shared the fairytale I was talking about in that blog. I did this lovely photoshoot for LinkedIn that gave me some beautiful pictures that you've probably seen online.

Because I'm a sucker for trilogies, here are 3 of my faves

There's A LOT of great news that I might share in the future or not. But life has been good generally. Like yesterday, for example, got some really great news. That one I will share in time.

One question I keep asking myself is, am I happy, though?

On most days, I am.

A more apt answer would be I find pockets of happiness every day. Even if I every day is not a great day or a happy one, as Meg thee Stal rapped, 1 thing I know, 2 things for certain; 

I will find pockets of sunshine in every day.

I will listen to funny podcasts or YouTube videos. I will watch "This is us" and tell people on my status that it's the best thing since sliced bread (because IT IS). Even if I don't tweet on most days, I'm on Twitter every day, seeing what people are up to. I will make time for the things that make me happy every now and then. As Yvonne Orji wrote, I may not always win, but I always win.

Last lesson, you will have bad/not so good days but take solace in the fact that a bad day is not a bad life. It's just that, a bad day. Ultimately, life averages out. And on average, you're probably ahead.