This morning while I was making some tea and waiting for the water to heat up in the microwave, I contemplated for a bit on why I was getting so frustrated every day. There are so many things piling up and waiting to be done. Of course everyone knows these: prioritize, organize, and plan. Yeah, easier said than done.
I was having brunch at Victory's Banner in Roscoe Village last week with a friend of mine. In our conversation she mentioned a few times the word "structure" in reference to life. She was telling me about how non-structured her life was, especially after partying a lot on the weekends, but she said "Thanks god that I have to go to work because it gives me structure." That term “structure” stuck in my head. Even if she doesn’t enjoy her job 100%, it balances her life and brings her back to a pace that makes her feel she is back on track. It is something that she is expecting that she has to do Monday-Friday, 9-5. It is this never failing expectation. She gets what she expects and this gives her structure.
Every day there are numerous things that come up, some urgent, some non-important and it is so easy to get astray and not think whether it is actually a productive thing that we are doing at the moment. And some of the things, like my friend’s partying too much sometimes can get us outside of reality completely. And these are so many things. Like make your tea, check a few blogs, chat on skype, oh, it's lunch time, let’s fix something for lunch now. And at the end of the day we've done so many things but we've done nothing. That makes me feel sad, stupid and pessimistic that I am not capable of doing anything right.
But as soon as I get something done and completed that I have actually planned on doing for that day I feel so much better. And so much more motivated, and all of a sudden the engine of live seems to work smoothly again. Every one of us must have something that we do, that is scheduled, structured that we expect to do and we do it. It could be going to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Such rituals are keeping us sane from the destructive daily distractions that we give way to.
What I realized is that we need to come up with some ritual(s) that we like and commit to doing, no matter how simple they are. It could be just a walk as Steve Chandler recommends in one of his "100 ways to motivate yourself" - make yourself a ritual, and when things seem to get out of control just do your ritual.
For my friend it is work that gives her structure, and it could be a number of other things for all of us. For example, being committed to go to the gym is part of my structure. Sometimes we need more than one structured activity to balance our daily life. We just have to realize what makes our structure and how to come up with more choices of activities to add to this structure if needed. For example, going every other day in the morning to the local coffee house and read the morning news on your laptop. You know what would work best for you.
Rituals! Cool! I have to go back now to my normal work day of distractions [sigh].