From Burnout to Balance

“I don’t have to do everything at once”. These were the words that helped me reset, refire, and get more done.

See, I am someone that loves to learn. Whatever I set my mind to learn, I make sure I learn it to the end, but one thing has always hindered my progress, and that is “the need to learn fast”. I always want to move at a very fast pace because it always feel like the world keeps moving and will leave me behind if I don’t learn fast enough to catch on, but what has that resulted into? Getting nothing done.

In my chosen field of diversification, there are so many things to learn. Funny part? These tools have been in existence for long, but I didn’t know because it was recently, I discovered that I need to learn them to be effective, so, I was prepared to learn these tools, (about five of them) as fast as possible.

I drew out a timetable that seemed “favourable” and began learning. A minimum of 10 hours a day to watch the videos, a few hours to practise, while also trying to earn a living. but soon, I realized that I learned nothing. Why? Because more than watching the videos, I wasn’t assimilating as much because I was in a competition with the world.

Out of frustration of not getting anything out of it, I took a break. A long one. It felt like that field was not for me because my brain kept rejecting everything I tried to put in there. The world will eventually leave me behind at this point, because why is my brain toying with my emotions?

After a careful self-analysis, I realized that I did it wrong. Imagine having to find means to earn, learn, and apply the learnings at the same time while still finding the time to rest and sleep because you don’t want to end up at the hospital, but out of all these concerns, the world leaving me behind was the only thing I could think of? Not minimalistic in anyway.

So, I did a thing. I chose one tool at a time, searched online for resources that would help me learn, broke the thirty hours long video down into one hour watch time daily, 3-4 hours practise time, 8-10 hours for the contents and voiceovers I needed to deliver, and used the rest for chores (when necessary), and rest.

You see this little routine change helped me achieve a lot within a short time. I started this routine since July, and I’m still on it now proving that I don’t have to learn everything at once.

Sometimes, understanding the logic behind a tool or situation can help you work with other similar tool or situation because you’ve had the experience, so, instead of learning all the tools at once, I’ve chosen to understand the logics, and take it one step at a time.

Just because of this change in my thinking, I have learned advanced SQL, the part of python I need for my tasks, and I am currently on cloud storage solutions. A minimalistic lifestyle indeed is where the peace is.

Images are mine.