Things That Matter and Happiness

I woke up today feeling rather anxious. I have accumulated a long list of to-dos. I have missed almost a week of daily reading before sleeping. I have work due next week and I have a class test next Thursday. The thoughts in my mind were: I'm not productive enough. I have not been managing my time well. I need to spend less time on something, but what? Ahhhh!

Pause. Breathe. Relax, Alfred. Let's see what I've done recently. I have been swimming, spinning and jogging with my team on average about 1 to 2 hours every day. I have been learning Ruby on Rails for about 2 to 3 hours almost every day. I have been completing my work on time and attending classes. I had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner with my team last night. I supported my team at a duathlon race last Sunday and took photos for them (which they were very appreciative of). I reconfigured my room and I love the new layout. My housemates and I found a new housemate to replace one who is leaving so we can stay in the same house next year (the house is a lot better than the small houses we viewed).

Well, that does not sound bad at all! Instead of looking at how much things I have done or I should be doing, I think I should look it this way: Do the things I do matter? Are the things I'm doing making me a happy person? Looking at the things I have done over the last week, that's a firm yes!

Deciding What To Do And What Not To Do

Being a very driven person, I have always wanted to be completing as many things as possible. Get shit done, they said. When I'm not checking tasks off my to-do list, I will feel crap. That is probably why I felt anxious this morning. Then I realised that it is not about how much I have done but whether the things I do matter and whether they make me happy.

I think I can look at it as a venn diagram:

Doing things that matter will benefit us in the long run but may be hard to start or sustain (eg. learning a new skill). Doing things that make us happy now makes us happy in the short term but may not be good if we just do them all the time (eg. socialising with friends).

The idea here is not to simply aim for the sweet spot in the centre - doing things that matter and make us happy. If you can, that will be great! (For me, exercising falls in that area.) It is because there are many things that matter and should be done but do not make us happy now. They may most likely make us happy eventually at some point in the future, otherwise they will not really be of importance (eg. starting a career or starting a community service project).

So I like to think of it this way: things that matter will eventually become things that matter and make us happy (centre of the diagram). However, that is in the long run. To keep us going in the short term, we should do a mixture of all three (things that matter, things that makes us happy now and things that matter and make us happy now).

Finding a good balance is not easy and in fact, I feel that the proportion should shift from time to time , depending on the context we are in. I have definitely not found a good balance for now. For instance, I want to be reading more because it makes me happy. However, I think I may have found a good way to decide what to do and not to do so that I can lead a meaningful and happy life.

If you have any thoughts about this way of thinking, let me know below (: (Off to read a book now before life gets in the way~)

Photo credit: Laurent Lebaux