Not everything is a missed opportunity
Just chill for a second. Geez.
Rodrigo Rivera
What are you doing reading this article?!?!
Didn’t you know that while you are out here wasting your precious time looking at some silly words in some magazine, people just like you are absolutely grinding for their future? They’re constantly applying to internships, developing their hard and soft skills, networking day and night. How can you afford to not be working on your career development if that’s what your future depends on?! C’mon dude, get serious.
Don’t even get me started on your academics. Instead of doom scrolling and watching all that pointless short-form content, have you thought about studying ahead for your classes, maybe reading some books about your major outside of what’s required? How do you expect to get ahead of everyone if you don’t even put in the effort? Seriously, if you don’t have a 4.0 it’s because you don’t care enough about your future.
Oh, and don’t come at me with excuses like, “I didn’t have access to some opportunities others had”. People your age, with YOUR background and YOUR skills, they’re miles ahead. The only reason you’re not living the life you want is your lack of ambition. You’re the problem.
OK OK OK! I’ll stop! Please disregard everything I just wrote until here. Even I, the author, am feeling a bit bad from writing this. But this is not just some random spiel I made up. This is how a lot of people actually think of themselves when they’re not being “productive”, and are instead—god forbid—taking a break, or doing something they enjoy like gaming, scrolling, or even hanging out with friends.
Now, why is it that we feel so guilty about doing the things that make us feel good? Sounds paradoxical, but it actually makes more sense than we’d think. It just may be that our way of framing things might be a bit on the toxic side, and it’s not entirely our fault.
Let me introduce you to opportunity costs. A term in economics that measures what value we lose out on from hypothetical choices when we make any choice. Basically, you can stay up studying and sleep 5 hours, or you can sleep 8 hours and miss out on some studying, but you can’t get both. Similarly, you can buy that new phone with your savings if you want, but that means you’ll have to miss out on that trip you wanted to take over spring break, you simply can’t get both in the position you’re in. No matter what, you’re missing out.
The same goes for our day to day lives. You can try to focus on your academics, your social life, and your job, but at the end of the day, for every thing that you do well, there’s a hundred things you didn’t do. Not because you don’t care, or you’re “too lazy”, but because it’s literally impossible to do everything we’d like.
“Yeah, it’s cool and all that you got that internship, but you haven’t hit the gym in months.”
“Wow, you got on the Dean’s list, but you should probably start eating healthier.”
“You worked quite a lot this week, but why didn’t you work even more? You could always use more money.”
With the internet, social media, and just regular conversation, we see so many people doing so many great things, all around us. So much so that we end up thinking that we have to do it all. But how could we possibly keep up? We’re not comparing ourselves to what one person can feasibly do. We are comparing ourselves to the best work of dozens of people.
As spectators, we can’t possibly know what they’re missing out on by being good at what they do, but I promise you that this is not a YOU thing. Everyone has to give up on a lot of stuff just to be able to focus on their priorities. Objectively speaking, no matter how much value you get out of your time, you can always lament that it wasn’t even higher, so please don’t lose sleep over that.
People break if they don’t get breaks. Know that when you’re resting, you’re not being “lazy”. You’re trading not making a bit more money, or not studying a couple more hours, for not having a complete shutdown from going all-in into being “productive”.