Aimlessness – When you don’t feel like you’re getting enough done

Do you also have a constant nagging feeling of falling behind? Do you feel like you could be doing more, but have trouble finding motivation?

Sometimes (mostly late at night), I think about the universe and the passage of time. Lately I’ve been struggling with restlessness, and if you have as well, perhaps this is something we can overcome together.

 

Be gentle with yourself

I’m the least patient person when it comes to myself. Some stress or urgency is healthy, but too much would just drain you of all motivation.

Do you ever feel like you’re a car, but you’re always running on empty? And even the simplest tasks seem to take so much fuel? It’s easy to get frustrated, try to force yourself, and get even more frustrated when it doesn’t work. But the proper way to solve the problem is to pull over, figure out what’s wrong, and call for help if you need to.

 

 

Cut out all the background noise

This quote from The Notebook always stood out to me: “forget what your parents want, forget what I want, what do YOU want? It is that simple.”

Sometimes, we have to be selfish in life and go for what we want even if it’s different from what people around us are doing. Be it in our careers, bucket list items, love lives, or aspirations.

After all, you can’t be truly happy if you’re always conforming and compromising for the people around you. And if you do get 100% of your happiness by making others happy, you’re not a human. You’re a saint.

 

 

Focus focus focus

This is another difficult thing for me to do. As a chronic overthinker, I get sidetracked and psyched out easily.

So if you’ve figured out what you want to do, or at least what makes you happy, it’s time to set specific things to do. These could be simple, one-of things like “take a day trip to X location”. Or ongoing things like “enroll in that part time graphic design course.” Or long-term goals like “build my own business offering X services.”

No matter what, make sure that you’re focusing on specific things and not trying to do everything at once. If five things are too many, choose three. If three are too many, choose one. 

 

 

Keep track of significant moments

If you’re as hard on yourself as I am, you also have moments when you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing. If you have physical proof of the growth you’ve gone through, you can prove yourself wrong in those moments. 

One of my friends keeps an album of significant days. These are pictures from large events, hangouts, milestones, and trips. At the end of every year, he looks through them and reviews all the moments that made him happy.

For me, it’s a notebook of free-form poetry. I don’t write in it often, but when I do, I make every line count.

 

 

How do you keep track of your growth? What is aimlessness like to you? What would you say is important to keep in mind or do?

 

You can also find me on my personal blog