I was scrolling and had to laugh at the contrast of what I saw.
Really??
The polarity drives me bonkers.
"You don’t need to be a project (unless you want to be)."
That's something I used to remind myself of quite a bit when I realized I'd become consumed by that type of performative stuff. It's not my proudest moment, but there was a stretch where I'd over-indexed on getting ahead and making more money, probably from crashing out after my traumatic brain injury. I bought into the illusion of hustling harder to give myself more cushion, but it did the opposite.
Whoops.
Live and learn, I suppose.
I’ve come to recognize that there's a big difference between treating yourself like a project and treating your projects like a professional. And it has much more to do with accountability than optimization.
To me, trying to optimize stuff isn't the same as trying to do it right.
If you look for things to fix, you’ll find them. And there’s a time and a place for that, but not everything needs to be optimized. Call it optimizing if you want, but for me, optimization as an outcome is best achieved as a byproduct rather than as the sole focus.
Think of a time when trying to do more made things worse. What'd you do to fix it?
onward.
If you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along. And if something stuck with you while reading, I'd love to know what it was. For more on BUDS and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here.