I've long ignored advice about stopping to smell the roses or how it's about the journey not the destination. I often tend to treat life like a sprint and that once this sprint is over, I can relax. Upon recent reflection, I realised this mindset has been a detriment to some aspects of my life. There's a lot of things in life that I would have enjoyed more if I hadn't approached it with a "speedrun" attitude.
Like a speedrun, I often focussed only on what I thought were essentials to reach the next milestone in life until I die. I ignored most other things which would make an otherwise enjoyable life. The milestones are the typical things: complete some exam/test, get admitted into some school/job, perform well at it, get promoted, get the next better one, buy this and that, complete this other major life goal and so on. I never actually stopped to appreciate the reward from each milestone. But, I was able to stack up some rewards and achieve goals I am proud of.
When I did achieve a thing, my main thought is "I should have done this sooner" and my focus immediately shifts into the next goal. I recall getting my dream job offer which I had promised myself I would be finally happy with - that same night I went to bed thinking about which jobs I should be applying to after and how I could earn more money. It's a never ending cycle. You're never "done". Achieving the goal isn't celebrated because it was lowkey the bare minimum in your mind - it had to happen. This makes missing these goals feel even worse.
More recently, AI tools have made it even easier to burden yourself with more tasks than ever. You think you can handle them because you have this tool to help you. But the reality is that your mind is more cluttered than ever. Here is an intersting read about how AI doesn't reduce work but intensifies it. The sense of "falling behind" has never been more prevalent.
This summer I'm actively trying to change my approach. There's a few places in my life where I'm approaching things differently. Across the board, I've greatly reduced the amount of parallel work I let myself do. I used to juggle multiple tasks simultaneous. For example at work, I'd often have multiple instances of Claude running, all working on different features/bug fixes at the same time, while also writing RFCs and responding to emails/Slack - this is was destroying my brain. The constant context switching was exhausting and although the end volume of work was higher, I think quality suffered a bit and enjoyment was not there at all. I now try to just do 1-2 tasks at a time.
This applies to some minor life stuff as well. If I'm cooking or eating, I'll just put a long video or talk to someone while eating. Previously I might have scrolled reels, do some work, or watched multiple videos at 2x speed (I also try to avoid 2x on YouTube videos where possible...)
To break away from the arbitrary milestones, I've reflected on the things that make a "good day" for me. I then built a simple app to track all these things and just tick them off every day. The more things I tick off, the "gooder" the day is. So far this has enabled me to actively do things which make me happy and give me more good days.
Alongside this, taking time to have gratitude for the good in your life is very important. Otherwise it's easy for me to just spiral into feeling like I haven't done enough, am falling behind and have other negative thoughts. I really like the quote The amount of good things in your life depends on your ability to notice them - so I try to notice the good more.
Another great quote is The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself[2].
References
- "AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It" by Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye
- "Wear Sunscreen" essay by Mary Schmich and spoken word by Baz Luhrmann