I think being able to function in life is very important.

I think it is important to be productive, actually get things done and move towards and create the life that you want.

But I also think there is a point where functioning can take over your whole life.

Functioning can look like optimizing your habits so you can get things done more efficiently and faster.

It can look like working through a to-do list that you didn't consciously create. You just wrote down all the fires that you have to work on, all the things that have to be done.

It can look like having your shit together and trying to control every piece of your life, because you know from experience that when something doesn't go to plan, your whole routine suffers.

And suddenly you feel like, “Oh my God, this is just on top of everything else.”

Your day was already fully packed.

You have almost no free time for yourself and no breathing room.

And this doesn't just happen for one or two days, but this becomes your normal.

Your life is very full and you have accumulated more and more things to do without really stopping and deliberately choosing what is actually allowed to be in your schedule.

When you are in this mode, you don't take the time to step back and look at your life from a different perspective.

You tell yourself that you don't have the time for that.

And this costs you a lot.

It costs you peace of mind, contentment, calmness and those moments where you can just be yourself and feel yourself.

Your relationships can suffer because you are always on edge and always jumping from one task to the next.

You have a harder time being present with another person, or even making time for the people in your life you really want to spend time with.

And your joy and pleasure suffer too.

When there are always things that have to be done, taking time for yourself and doing nothing can feel like a waste of time.

You could be working on your to-do list.

You tell yourself that tomorrow might be a bit more relaxed, but then tomorrow just fills up like today.

And you miss the times when you were spontaneous.

A friend asks you to spontaneously go to a concert and you don't have the capacity or the energy to do it.

And if you happen to have an evening for yourself, you don't necessarily know what to do with it.

You crash on the couch because you are exhausted and try to calm down.

And then you find yourself on social media or watching a series on TV.

And the evening is gone.

And you feel like you haven't actually done anything that brought you joy or pleasure.

And you can feel stressed because you don't have enough time even when you actually have an hour.

You miss the small pleasures in life because you jump from one task to the next, and even taking one minute to enjoy the view out of your window can feel like time you don't have.

I know this because I have done this myself.

In 2015 - 2018, I was very busy working in the lab on my project and paper.

I basically worked 10 hours a day and had almost no weekend for myself because I had to go to the cell culture.

I remember that I was even negotiating with myself about whether I should go to the coffee corner, which was on the same floor, and have a glass of water.

Or should I rather do the mini prep first and only have the glass of water while my agarose gel was running?

I was confused when colleagues asked me to meet for coffee in the afternoon and told me that they went for coffee every afternoon.

And I was thinking, how can they even find time for these 15 minutes every day to just sit and chill and talk?

I didn't really find the time.

I was always so stressed and running, literally running to the FACS facility, that I didn't stop and chat with a colleague when I met them in the corridor and ask them how their project was going.

I was always on the run.

And at the same time, I was still doing martial arts, something I had been doing for 20 years.

I remember negotiating with myself about whether I should leave at six o'clock once a week to go to training.

And I knew that martial arts was something that could really calm me down.

It brought my focus to the here and now. It made me focus on my body and the sensations in my body.

It was actually a beautiful counterpoint to the scientific work I was doing.

But even then, I had to negotiate with myself about whether I was allowed to take the time for it.

And underneath all of this was something else.

I always had this need to prove myself.

I thought this was normal. I thought this was how it was supposed to go if you wanted to be successful in science.

And at some point I noticed that this wasn't sustainable.

I couldn't do it anymore.

I wanted a normal life.

A life that wasn't dominated by my work, where my work had priority and dictated my calendar.

Where my work decided which weekends I could visit my parents and which evenings I could leave at five and meet a friend.

I wanted more balance in my life.

I didn't want to feel the pressure of having to deliver for years on end with no break.

Because it felt like every success was just a stepping stone and the starting point of more work.

More work and more work.

There was no downtime for me.

And I didn't want a life where I had to give 150 percent all the time for years and years.

What I do differently now is actually quite simple.

I deliberately take 20 minutes during the day for meditation.

Sometimes it is after lunch, when I would otherwise sit around feeling sluggish and low on energy and unable to focus.

I do a short self-hypnosis or meditation and deliberately take the time to recharge my batteries.

Then I can come back refreshed and work with full focus again.

I can work faster and with more precision than if I had forced myself to keep reading the email and thinking when I didn't have the energy anymore.

I have learned to work more dynamically with the ebbs and flows of my energy.

When my energy is low, I allow myself to go with that ebb.

I reduce my thinking and go into feeling my body and being in the present moment.

And afterwards I often have more focus.

Of course discipline can mean getting things done.

But discipline can also mean sticking to the breaks you have scheduled instead of trying to work through them.

It can mean deciding that you will give yourself one week to fully work on your manuscript, and then not immediately scheduling another time-intensive experiment afterwards.

You can deliberately celebrate what you achieved and give yourself half a day, or even a day, to catch up with everything else you didn't tend to.

And I think we need to define success for ourselves.

Maybe success is climbing the career ladder and having the job title that impresses your study buddies, your friends from university or your family.

But maybe success for you is having a decent job in science and also having time for your hobbies.

Maybe you want to go climbing.

Maybe you want to hike in the mountains in Norway.

Maybe you want to have dinner with your friends on a Wednesday evening.

Maybe you want to be able to take a whole Sunday off without feeling guilty about it.

Because I think a lot of people are trying to get something through all this functioning.

They want to feel that they deserve their job.

They want to feel good about themselves because they gave everything.

And often there are values underneath this.

You have to work hard in order to be paid.

You have to show that you are serious about your job.

If you don't give everything, maybe you are not worthy of it.

And you want to feel good about yourself.

You want to be happy in the end.

But sometimes the way you are behaving to get there is actually blocking you from experiencing the very thing you want.

Maria