Wtf is all the hype about efficiency?

It’s 57 degrees outside. My stomach hurts. I skipped my workout this morning because I had a 7 am meeting (that should be illegal, right?), and my knee is still messed up. Have I called a doctor? No. Have I googled my symptoms in an attempt at self-diagnosis? Also no. If I ignore it long enough it might go away.

It was 81 degrees two days ago and I was filled with a sense of energy and excitement only elicited from vitamin D. Sure, I take one capsule of it every day, but it doesn’t hit the same as the real deal.

The sky is cloudy and I’ve been pretty sedentary today. It feels right. It matches the aesthetic created by the weather. At the same time, I’m wracked with guilt. I’m a product of productivity culture. I thrive on efficiency. A list of tasks that need completing are my shit. The satisfaction I receive from crossing those tasks off said list is tremendous.

As the weather changes, and my body takes me to task (no pun intended), I find myself slowing down. Instead of relaxing and enjoying the reprieve from the constant go go go I’m accustomed to, I’m feeling restless. Antsy. Irritable. And, here’s that word again, guilty.

I didn’t get much work done today because I couldn’t focus. Meetings really drain my creative reserves, especially when they’re right away in the morning. “I had several meetings, so that’s my excuse,” I said to my dad earlier, explaining why I was feeling so unproductive after we killed almost an hour chatting on the phone. “You don’t always need an excuse, you know,” was his reply to me, which got me thinking.

Why is my first inclination guilt? To find a reason to validate my lack of productivity?

Is this what adulthood is? Ignoring aches and pains, not getting enough sleep, and putting your work above your happiness? Maybe it is in America, but my company is European, and from what I know of the working culture there, it’s a lot more balanced. Take Italy, for example. It’s a country that isn’t exactly known for its efficiency. Which, if you read Changing the Channel with Kirsten Powers, you’d know is also part of its charm. I loved what she said in her article about how moving to Italy is teaching her how to rest. She has a lot of content about this topic.

“It’s not that Italians can’t be efficient. It’s that efficiency isn’t one of their values, which left me wondering how it ever became one of mine.”

That sentence stuck with me, because same, Kirsten, same. How did it become one of mine? Why do I feel so accomplished when I’ve checked everything off my list and so guilty when I haven’t? It’s gotten to the point where I don’t let myself rest until I’ve completed this or that task. It’s like a game based on incentives. Did I read my daily news emails and articles accumulated over the course of the day? No? Can’t watch an episode of The O.C. until I do. Did I do my daily Spanish lesson? Might as well do that too. Can’t forget about folding the laundry, stretching, working out, taking a walk, etc. The list goes on, because really, when are we ever done? There’s always something else waiting for us.

So, while my stomach hurts and my knee aches and my brain is tired, I’m letting myself rest. And I’m reflecting on why it’s so hard for me to do so. Funny enough, I started writing this intending to talk about imposter syndrome. While this is a relevant topic to any creative, the reason I was going to talk about it, I now realize, was to assuage my guilt about not having written anything lately. To address the discomfort of neglecting my creative pursuits.

I haven’t touched my latest work-in-progress in days. I have some revisions I’d like to make to my first manuscript, the one I’m actively querying, though it’s not like I’ve sent a query in the last two weeks, either. See what I mean? I have a lot to do. And I’m criticizing myself for procrastinating. For feeling daunted. I’m being hard on myself, as I tend to do.

I could look at this from a whole new perspective: a startling low percentage of writers that begin a novel actually finish it. An even smaller amount go on to find agents and publish their work. According to Lucy’s article, The Publishing question, from her rumblewrites publication,

“97% of people who want to write a book never finish it.” She continues, “Only 1-2% of querying authors get an agent AND get their book published. It’s important to note that these two things do not always go hand in hand: sometimes you get an agent and still don’t find a publisher.”

Yikes. Rather than berating myself, I could congratulate myself for having written a novel in the first place. But my efficiency-loving inner critic is already moving on to the next step. It says to me, “You didn’t write this for nothing, did you?! Send a f*cking query letter.” My inner critic is kind of mean.

I will write a post about imposter syndrome soon, but this one needed to be written first. That’s one of the things I love most about writing. The meaning sometimes finds you. You set out to write something specific, and something completely different emerges. It’s a beautiful experience to see the ideas that you didn’t know were there come to life from the words you write.

It’s like they have a mind of their own and writers are just their hosts. Maybe that will sound too new age-y to some of you. But it’s cool nonetheless.

What’s even cooler? I feel pretty productive after writing this. My inner critic is mercifully silent right now.