The Discomfort of Comfort

How to Cope with the Anxiety of Knowing You Could Always Do More

We’re often encouraged to be go-getters in life. Push yourself outside your comfort zone! Say yes! Try new things! Following the conventional wisdom, we always want to be adding things to our plate. 

There are no similarly pithy mantras for knowing when we have taken on too much, no cheery slogans for taking a step back or quitting. We’re not really supposed to do that, right? Sounds like being lazy to me, and we’re definitely not supposed to do that. 

This year I made the decision to stop working on weekends. I’m a graduate student by day, which means I have a large amount of flexibility in determining my schedule and no bosses to monitor my progress. This sounds idyllic, but, as is often the case with self-employment or jobs where you’re ostensibly following your passion, the autonomy also comes with a nagging anxiety that I should be working all the time. 

Last year, I responded to that anxiety by trying to do the most that I was physically capable of. I frantically ran around campus networking and attending seminars and coding and writing and teaching and signing up for projects like there was no tomorrow. My weekends were spent doing broadly similar things, of course - no days off! 

My efforts were very fruitful, but I was also exhausted. Fortunately, winter break provided me with a temporary reprieve from the hustle. By the time January came around, the mere thought of returning to my previous work pace made me feel tired. I just couldn’t do it any more.

So I quit the non-stop grind cold-turkey. These past few months I’ve been working hard Monday through Friday, but when I shut my laptop for the day on Friday night, I don’t reopen it for work-related things over the weekend. 

Protecting weekends has involved a radical reconceptualization of how I think about work during the week. Things had to get done by Friday because I would no longer push anything to the weekend. Instead of causing undue pressure and anxiety, as arbitrary deadlines sometimes do, it made me think more carefully about how I manage my time. 

I prioritized the things that really had to get done, and really cut back on commitments that felt less critical to my progress. I made sure to only take on as much work as I could conceivably get done within five days. And in doing so, I had to say no and quit and cut back a LOT.

We often talk about work-life balance as this comfortable place we should strive towards. But we rarely acknowledge that finding balance frequently requires sacrifice, which can be deeply uncomfortable. It means completely giving up that go-getter attitude of constantly saying yes and putting yourself out there, figuring out how to juggle everything as you go along. 

If you do it well, a lot of it will involve figuring out how to be more efficient, maybe trimming down the parts of your work that weren’t really so critical in the first place. But by and large, there is no denying that it’s impossible to achieve as much in 5 working days as you can in 7 working days. 

I’m making fewer connections. I’m not starting new projects. I’m probably being passed over for opportunities, because I’m no longer the can-do girl. 

Choosing to prioritize other areas of life means actively choosing to do less than you know you are capable of. Contrary to all the memes about slacking and quiet quitting, this is a profoundly uncomfortable realization to sit with! 

Our culture is obsessed with productivity and hustling. We’re always trying new productivity tools and life hacks in the search of that magic trick that will help us perform better, eke more productive value out of every moment, and ignore our human needs for a little longer so that we can focus on a laptop screen.

Pursuing work-life balance or working less involves actively pushing against that culture, even if it’s the only way you know how to be. It’s disorientating. It feels transgressive to read a book or go for a pilates class in the middle of the day, knowing I could be doing, producing, working more in that very moment. 

Ironically, not trying to push myself to the limit with work all the time feels deeply uncomfortable. The stress and anxiety of feeling like I always need to work somehow became the comfort zone I operated from. I might be stressed and exhausted, but at least I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, right? Rest, the comfortable activity, is much more difficult to do without constantly second-guessing myself because society is much less gung-ho about it.

For me, the trade-off seems worth it. I now spend my weekends really resting, enjoying my hobbies, and rediscovering who I am outside of being a grad student. It’s a lifestyle that makes me happier. But it is also quite challenging to be fully present in it without feeling guilty.

It’s easy to view my choice as allowing myself to be lazy or taking the easy way out. But I think that, as a culture, we have internalized the constant grind so much that it has become the new comfort zone. Choosing to prioritize other areas of life and allowing myself to rest feels like a more difficult choice in a way. And if you’re also someone who is prone to pushing yourself to the limit all the time, I think that’s worth thinking about. 

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I’m curious - what does pushing yourself outside your comfort zone look like to you?