I’ve been feeling quite tired for the last few weeks. There were days where I pushed myself to continue working on my startup and small projects even when I didn’t feel like it. And no, there were no big changes in my life, it is just that I felt empty while being in front of the screen, writing what I had to.
I don’t usually have this feeling and it was a bit unexpected when I found myself creating excuses to avoid checking one more task on my ToDo list. However, in the middle of this long “breaks” where I did nothing but trying to make some sense from the list of tasks I had to complete, I remembered a concept that changed my perspective some time ago:
Wholeheartedness, living a sincere life with ourselves.
Let me elaborate, there are people who seem to be always happy and willing to do the work when I am feeling like taking a nap. They have quite a different perspective over what matters to them and why they do what they do. And they are always motivating other people by example.
I used to work much more believing that my hard work would pay off, even when I was working on things that were not important to me or that I wouldn’t even care about. I would spend endless nights, trying to push myself to write one more paragraph, fix one more bug, when in reality, the only thing I wanted to do was to do something different.
Don’t get me wrong, the hard work paid off. The problem is that I was always tired and feeling empty, just like this week.
It was then when I remembered how reminding yourself of the meaning of your work, might make things easier.
Because when we know the reason to do any activity, it is easier to define if it is worth doing it at all. If we find ourselves just not willing to finish one important task that we were delaying for so long to fix, it may be because we haven’t set the meaning of it.
And probably the best habit that I implemented in my life, has been to take between 5 to 10 minutes to question myself about what I am doing.
Because now, every time that I am in front of a task that I feel like I don’t want to do, I ask myself: “Does this activity have a bigger meaning to me? Is this task aligned with my values or goals? Is there any meaning in this task for myself?”
So then, when I take the final decision, I can focus on the tasks that are aligned with my values and I know if taking the time to complete that task will bring any benefit to me. This way, I get further away from the things I don’t find meaningful or important to me and I can focus on building the life I want one step at a time.
I would love to know from you about this topic.
I hope you have a wonderful week,
John
Weekly realizations
I love remote work - I saw some threads on Twitter about how people would even ask for a 100% increase on their salaries to convince them to go back to an office job. I totally agree with this, the feeling of having the benefits of creating a space for yourself at home is priceless. Of course, this is not for everyone but I think is worth considering this option.
The Notion API - This week, the Notion API was released to the public. It is a feature that many people were waiting for YEARS and it is finally ready for use. In less than 24 hours there were plenty of videos released on YouTube about using this API to make integrations with other apps. I’ve never seen any other app getting such hype for a technical release.
Highlight of the week
I am taking part of the organization of the second cohort of the year for ubX Academy, a course aimed to know yourself more and challenge your ideas in order to improving your life and finding meaning in your work. You can see the link to the course here: https://ubx.academy/apuntate/