It’s another night at my job where I find myself questioning things - I feel stressed by my job, and so I ask: Why?
Because I have to have a solid chunk of work to show at my meeting tomorrow at 8:30am, and I haven’t really done much yet of anything.
Why?
Because I spent too much time today doing nothing productive - instead watching Youtube videos, walking around, calling my girlfriend, going to a cider bar for trivia night…
Why?
Because I’m unmotivated by the work on my plate.
Why?
Because I don’t find it particularly meaningful. I’m just a 24-year-old making slides to tell the CEO what he already knows.
After my round of Five Whys and a rabbit hole adventure down into the parable of the Mexican Fisherman, I assume that the Panic Monster will arrive at some point to rescue me from my insane levels of procrastination… hopefully early enough to the point where I can get a few sleep cycles in for the night.
But while I’m procrastinating, I wonder: what if I stopped? Why am I at this job? For the prestige of being a consultant? For the toolkit that I’m learning about (which, so far, appears to be mostly just keyboard shortcuts and a drive toward “being tactical”)? What if I decided to switch over to a new world - one with 9-to-5 work schedules, an ability to do stuff like attend a running club after work, where I didn’t have to endure dinners that last more than 2x as long as dinners with my friends whom I know 10x better?
But then, I think about how lucky I am. Because not everyone was able to get this job, and because I’m in a position that others would kill to be in (metaphorically, I hope). Because I spent time and effort and money and energy into graduating with three degrees, and I’m now at an elite firm where elite people go do impactful things (🙄, but also holy shit I can’t believe the company has people working on something this cool). Not everyone has what I have - the education, the position, the overall life-security — I drew the long straw, and I ought to do the right thing that a Good Person would do if they were in my position.
And so, I will put my head down, suck it up, and get to work. I will make the two slides that need to be made, I will go to bed at a hopefully reasonable time, and I will, in all due likelihood, forget about this incident in a few days when I’m back with the best coworkers in the world who are there through each peak and valley. And I will forget about this incident when I feel lucky and excited to be at a firm where crazy things happen that make you feel like you’re sure that the universe aligned and you’re in the right place at the right time.
Stay tuned for when I write my 1-year-review of consulting. That’ll be a doozy.
Update | Eat the frog.
It’s been a few days since my procrastination nightmare, and I’m feeling (perhaps unsurprisingly) like I’ve gotten everything wrong. Did I really not want to do that work? It was in fact exactly what I said I wanted to do. A very solid number of hours today have been spent in flow state working on this project (even though I’m clearly procrastinating right now), and I had that sense of contentedness that comes to a working man who finds himself one with the work. I’m sure that sounds like bullshit, but it’s a hard to describe feeling that clicks once you experience it - have most people hit true flow?
In any case, was I really just being a massive baby? I suppose I don’t really know what to think and what to trust. On one hand, I clearly didn’t enjoy the experience - but looking back after the fact, why? It wasn’t really that much work - I must have knocked everything out in under 2 hours. It wasn’t really that hard - again, 2 hours.
I was talking to my principal today, and he mentioned that “sometimes, you have to eat the frog. It’s generally better to eat the frog first.” I’ve sat here typing away to procrastinate long enough. Dinner’s ready.