Work better, live happier — thoughts on thinking
After a concert is before a concert!
…well, yes it is, given my profession, which might make it all too easy to forget that there is a “between”, and that we’re allowed to foster and cherish this time, too.
A couple days after the premiere of our big project, La reine danse (pics & videos coming soon), Zuzanna Grzegorowska and I finally caught a moment of stillness. Time stretched lazily by unhurried brainstorming for music and dance repertoire, it allowed a smooth transition to what follows in my agenda - Time Off.
It is a moment to let my hair down, even if only metaphorically, given the unforgiving weather; to step back and reflect on work before an upcoming marathon of concerts in Autumn. Most of all, it is perhaps a rare chance to distance myself and calmly reconsider the all-too-common experience of low-key hysteria when facing with terror a part of the agenda depleted of scheduled commitments (‘is this yet a proof I’m useless? Am I a failure?’).
For many freelancers, a blank day (or - heavens forbid - a few in a row) only in theory means pastime and rest, and in practice it quickly turns into a micro-hell of guilt. Good luck restoring your energy and humour while increasingly overwhelmed by such questions as ‘shouldn’t I be working now?’, or ‘am I just wasting my precious time?’, and ‘how can I be sure it’s ok not to be working right now?’. Why is that a challenge?
In our highly competitive field of work we are forced to face comparison virtually all the time. And as a minority on the job market of corporate and physical workers, we experience our reality infiltrated by work standards of other industries virtually without us noticing. The giant boom of idealised productivity, alongside the rise of productivity gurus and endless tutorials on routines and quick-fix methods of improving our work is unquestionably a lucrative business. However, the shiny side of the medal only superficially hides the other one: for many, an inevitable result of exposure to such pressure is a lonely experience of feeling unworthy, not good enough, and in the end - guilty for failing.
Take a step away from the daily routine in an attempt to gain objectivity in evaluating it, and you might notice that your work is structured in short cycles of daily renewal. What seems natural at first (just think of the avalanche of popular quotes on new chances arising every day, ready to flood your feed after a single google search) might appear to arbitrarily cut up factually longer work periods upon closer examination. Periods of varying length, with intensity centred around gigs and influenced by varying tasks accomplished at different milestones of each given project. Already at this point I shall remark that neither daily nor longer cycle of work is inherently superior to the other - indeed, both are rooted in and omnipresent among nature, whether it be (daily) Sun and (roughly monthly) Moon periods of change and recurrence, or the biological male and female experience of daily life, paralleling the former. And while they have coexisted for centuries, they have also served broadly different purposes of ordering tasks and duties within timeframes. A feature seemingly so obvious that it’s waning novelty has all but erased it from our society’s consciousness.
While we can hardly find much in common between the life of a freelancing artist and a white (or even blue) collar worker, we intuitively seek to judge our work with the help of tools designed to measure theirs. The difference of scale and of goals between a company or a corporation, employing many and depending on quantifiable outcomes of their predictable activity; and ourselves, often employing a single “self” forced to multitask and juggle a variety of skills, should make the attempts at comparison futile. Still, used to chasing never-ending growth and habituated to living with constant comparison and scarcity mindset, we do a very good job bringing down and flagellating ourselves for achieving results which (as we can easily convince ourselves) deserve either punishment or contempt. Had we tried being a little less self-condescending, we could observe that often it’s not our work that fails, but our judgment.
On the one hand, I am deeply conscious that my work life incorporates sometimes getting back from work past 1:00am, getting up at 5:00am another time, or having a 2:00-6:00am break in sleep to take a flight. On the other hand, I have craved a regular daily life (the legendary Routine) for years, hoping that incorporating it in my life will be a magic key to happiness and an answer to all my troubles. It is only this year that I have finally accepted this expectation to be nonsense, for it simply does not apply to the life resulting from my occupation. Instead, I have changed my focus from rigid day frames to a more flexible (on a daily level) rhythm of work routines based on weeks or longer, to accept the changing performance as a fact, and not a shortcoming. Indeed, any plan based on factual information will prove more successful than one based on wishes.
Changing the scale against which to measure our achievements allows us to appreciate the results of our diverse work for what they really are. Moreover, embracing the change and understanding it makes it possible to work better, and - thanks to forsaking the scarcity approach - be happier. Is it perhaps a small, yet important step towards more sustainable work-life balance? Who knows. For me, it’s worth a try.