| Happiness and Productivity |
People always say that happiness comes from
within and I’m not trying to argue with that. It’s just that people sometimes
forgot to mention that you also have to work really, really hard for it. More often than not you can’t just ‘will
yourself to be happy’ and although ‘it is all in the head’, bear in mind that
you have to physically do something
about it.
I remember my six months after SPM when I
just stayed at home for most of the time, spending hours on my phone and laptop
and having minimum amount of physical contact with other human beings. I’d
spend days cocooning myself in the comfort (and darkness) of my room, binge
watching videos on YouTube and finishing multiple TV series. Reading was probably
one of the most productive things I did in my spare time. That, and a bit of
writing. Well, at least my brain was doing more exercises than my body ever
did. Anyways, in those six months of ‘isolation’, I drove myself insane time and
time again. Mind you, I am good at entertaining and enjoying my own company, I
got good at it after the first few weeks but I was not being productive. I didn’t
have any goals bigger than finishing a whole season of Friends in one day nor
did I have anything else to look forward to besides the new episode of The Good
Doctor (or MacGyver, Botched, Supernatural, Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry
and even The Loud House on Nickelodeon). Bottom line, I watched a lot of TV shows, but still wasn’t being
productive. So I had problems with myself. I wasn’t happy, was far away from
that as I could possibly be at times and I got really bad at socializing.
Although, I was never good at it in the first place. Huh.
Anyways, what I learned since being in
university is that being productive is far more relaxing than ‘just relaxing’.
I find it therapeutic to set little daily goals and ticking them off,
regardless of how silly the goal or task is. Real talk, I would put ‘fill up your
water bottles’, ‘do your laundry’, and ‘iron your clothes for tomorrow’s class’,
little stuffs like that, and it’s always fun to erase them one by one from my
whiteboard. (Side tip: get a freaking whiteboard for yourself.) Ticking off one
item after another gives you the sense of accomplishing something and it’s very
satisfying even though what you did was really a small task. I did it on the
daily during our lecture weeks because I needed to be organized or I wouldn’t
even want to wake up in the morning. It was also a good way to not forget any
important assignments.
My point is, being productive helps put me
in a better place in life. I know what I wake up for in the morning, I have my
goals that I want to achieve and I have a sense of purpose. And that is what makes me happy for the time
being. I gotta say, it is exhausting at times especially that I’m still new
with the whole concept of being a university student and sometimes the work got
overwhelming and I wore myself down and sometimes I also procrastinated despite
the scribblings on the whiteboard screaming at me to get off my ass and do some
work (oh hey, that’s exactly what I’m
doing now) but at the end, I would feel content with everything. I get happy
when I got shit done.
I’m not shitting on the whole idea of
having a me-time and just relax without doing anything. We need those too. And
the key is really in balancing it all and make the most out of everything. Some
days you just push yourself too hard and need to take a little break to be okay
again. Some days you don’t push yourself enough and need to work your ass off
to be okay again. You don’t want the amount of work to overwhelm you but you also
need to tick some items off the list for it not to. Balance.
I think I made my point, so I’m gonna end this one here. Quote of
the day: “Get shit done.”
-Nik.
Nik Fateen. An introvert trying to find home in a foreign space.