Have you ever felt completely disconnected from everyone around you? You just feel tired, unmotivated, uninspired, unimportant and all the other “uns” that you can pile on that list. It’s so easy to exhaust ourselves to a point where we feel empty. So much that we can feel like we hold no value. We set our expectations so high on ourselves that we just burn out.
There is nothing wrong with high expectations, unless they are so high that we never reach them. Giving ourselves unrealistic goals is a burden no one should have. They can cause us to fail more often than not. When failures outweigh our successes it can be hard to stay motivated. It causes us to be depressed and out of touch with who we are and what we want to do.
If you choose to, you can see what everyone else is doing all the time. That’s what social networks allow for us to do. The problem is, the more time we spend looking at what everyone else is doing, the less we are pursuing ourselves. That adds more failure to our life. On top of that, lost time. Time is valuable, but what we do with it makes it even more valuable.
This leaves us with two choices.
We can choose to give ourselves achievable goals. Is it something that we can obtain in a given time frame? Is it something someone else has done? If it’s a feat no one else has done before, be prepared for failure even more, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try them from time to time. That’s where awesome things can happen, but sadly they can be rare. In the past I have had aspirations to do some big projects in each new year, but I haven’t followed through. I ended up wasting time on other things. I wasn’t ready to take them on either. I could say that I didn’t have enough time, because that’s the worst excuse out there. I just didn’t use my time to prepare myself to take on those challenges. Improperly managing my time was my flaw. It is something I still struggle with.
We can choose to add value to our time. I’m not saying you have to work harder and longer hours. That’s not always good either. You have to work smarter and be more focused. This is something I have failed at over and over again. Setting an allotted time aside is what can keep you from burning out and doing better work. You can’t sacrifice sleep all week. Each day you are behind on sleep you lose concentration and productivity during the day. Sleep time has extreme value. Do not waste it. The if I become sleep deprived I notice it in everything I do. Pieces of projects fall through the cracks and quality is sacrificed just as much as my sleep.
Don’t invest more time, invest more into your time. There’s a difference. This is something I have discovered, but it took me 25 years to figure it out on my own.
The more in touch you are with your work, the more in touch you will be with yourself. You’ll be happier, healthier and creating your best work yet.
