Pendulum swings, rightfully so!

Being human is the most fascinating experience I have ever been through so far. Nothing beats me to it. The awe is intact 😅

For example: I spent 1000+ days to build consistency and recently I spent 100+ days undoing all the consistency in my life. Crazy isn't it?

Let me explain: There was a time where inconsistency was the only consistent thing in my life (2008-2018). The pendulum was on one end. I bulldozed it hard enough to make consistency a big part of my life (2018-2020). This time I took consistency through the roof and there came a point where just my routines filled my entire day- ~8 hours (2021). I went through a productivty burn-out (yeah, such a thing exists).  The pendulum swinged to the other end this time.

Imagine, you are on a vacation and you have things to do for 8 hours because they are a part of your routine 🤷🏽‍♀️

I woke up at 5 am and finished my routines for the day so that I can have a chill time during the day. That experience sucked big time. It shook me hard. The vacation experience made me relook at life. It felt like I was living on extreme edges.

I could not sustain it long enough so I had to do something about my hyper productivity. This time I said I am going to do only one project at a time and I will stick to only routines of the project. No extra habits or routines this time. This was me in August first week.

I went through an insane period of just one project at a time (Aug-Sept) and I buried my head into the sand like an Ostrich and worked on DPDI 2021. It stressed the hell out of me and I overworked on every aspect of DPDI. I also loved every aspect because creativity just flowed because I didn't budge to do anything else.

Now that I have experienced one thing at a time and I have destroyed every routine I had, I am coming back to the center of the pendulum for balance. The swing is real.  No wonder I didn't write a single word on this blog. Now I am figuring out how to have a life that will be untainted by the projects of my life.

Here are 5 things I learned by swinging between extremes and finding a balance finally:

• One project at a time is the best decision of my life. It was easy to say no to everything else. I struggled with NO otherwise.
• Pareto (80-20 rule) really worked. It helped me divide my time appropriately. I spent 20% of time for my routines of the project that are non-negotiables. 80% of the time was allocated to that one project at hand.
• By doing less, I ended up doing more. Instead of focusing on 100 things I focused on one thing. Every rabbit hole seems to be deep and bottomless. So loved working with the pressure of time, scope and resources and doing things for that one project really well.
• I lost a lot of compounding that i built otherwise because of my one project focus. I sucked with managing our community and engaging in some social media stuff. I also said no to a ton of consulting efforts which could have paid our bills a lot more than the project at hand. But hey, the problem solver in me is finding better ways to solve problems now.
• Unlearning takes more time than learning my friends. You may have to unlearn every now and then. Even things you learn the hard way may have to be unlearned at one point or other. This was hard for me.

Talking about swinging pendulums was hard. In other words being vulnerable was hard but if you are struggling with your hypo or hyper productivity, you are not alone. We all go through it. The world is moving at a break-neck speed and no wonder adapting and adjusting is taking time.

Finding feet in a fast moving world is hard. Keep going 🙌

🥂 to self care!