People feel like they need to work out loud, but that’s not the case.
The main thing that sets us apart from each other is our ability to develop and hold our own beliefs, values, and priorities. Being a university student, in a hot-pot of cultures and backgrounds, the fear of not standing out and the pressure to always be more than the next, can become overwhelming.
How do we cope with that? By making sure everyone knows that we’re busy.
In 2019, how hard you work is no longer measured in the actual outcome, but rather in how much sleep you didn’t get or how much time you just didn’t have. I’m guilty of being one of many perpetrators who has thrown out the phrase ‘I’m busy’ one too many times. A lot of the times I genuinely am busy, however, a noticeable number of times, I simply put it out to let someone know I’m working, perhaps more than they are. This behavior usually flies under the radar, because we have so much to do, we don’t have time to pick up on these subtle cues that people in our surroundings do.
This is where it gets tricky because you genuinely can be busy, you genuinely can not have time to breathe and you can be sleep deprived. However that shouldn’t be the thing that makes you feel, or rather seem, productive.
I find that people are more productive when they have positive reinforcement as opposed to reminders of constant competition. With this mentality, it’s also easy for work to become less about genuine effort and more about a sense of constructed productivity, when there might be none.
As the new year approaches, it’s important to urge everyone to work hard, work silently and work authentically, because, at the end of the day, your success is not dependant on how hard someone else may or may not be working.
Let this be a spark for a discussion on what makes you more productive and which habits and tips you can offer to your peers about being busy.
