My daughter’s grandma is visiting, making me reflect on my upbringing more.

I grew up in a culture that heavily values working hard. My mother was a hard worker, my father was a hard worker, their parents were hard workers, and so on up to 7 generations (or so my grandmother’s genealogical records say). This meant sitting down to relax wasn’t really something valuable - further, “why are you sitting down? It’s daytime” was a common phrase I’ve heard thrown around.

I wasn’t abused into working non-stop, mind you (in fact, my mom loved me very much), but I did pick up a lot of the core beliefs about hard work, the value of the work, and what makes a good hard-working person “good”.

This had quite a few upsides. I wouldn’t get tired when I needed to work - be it physically or mentally. Or more or less, I wouldn’t really be bothered by feelings of fatigue. You just push through, naturally. That made studying and working easier. A 16 hour shift during the sowing season? Not a problem. Study late into the night? Easy. Crunch time in the office? No worries.

This mindset has set me up with a decent academic performance, and a string of jobs which eventually ended up in a career in the heart of Silicon Valley, and a career I’ve done well for myself in.

The Silicon Valley mindset didn’t help. There’s this ever-present push to be more productive, to grow, and to spend every minute of your day getting better, faster, stronger (I touched on this briefly when I wrote in defense of quality). This just worked to reinforce the mindset I already have.

I spent many evenings and weekends reading self-improvement or programming books (which is reflected in the content of my blog about a decade ago) or taking classes. I tried to get really good at my hobbies, so that I don’t waste time stagnating. No time to waste.

Smell the flowers (credit: https://www.instagram.com/shencomix/).

You see, there are negative aspects to believing that hard work is the only measure of “goodness”, because ever since I was a kid sitting down, relaxing, and not doing much was frowned upon. Oh, don’t get me wrong - I got to play plenty, but the play had to be enriching, useful, and valuable to my growth as an individual. Otherwise it’s “grumble-grumble” and “we’re going to throw away this computer some day”.

I find myself taking these beliefs into adulthood. Despite much self-work (a patient, loving, and caring companion helps), I still sometimes find myself worried that I’m not being productive, or doing the right thing.

I saw this play out even during my time off. I’d spend days organizing documents and tackling long-delayed paperwork, instead of taking the time to focus on things I’d rather do instead. Work, work never ends.

A decade ago I still played video games and watched shows I love, but I saw the activity as a waste of time. And I’d feel guilty every time I’d engage in any form of entertainment, and sometimes I’d even engage in mental gymnastics to try to prove to myself that what I’m doing is done to improve my own qualities as a human being, like playing a game to learn a new language or maybe pick up a skill I could use in a real life.

After much rediscovery, self-love, and care I try not to do that anymore. I work hard, yes, but I don’t beat myself up for relaxing and smelling the roses. I love my video gaming hobbies, I enjoy miniature painting, reading science fiction, and picking up short-lived but fulfilling interests here and there.

Going on paternity leave this year has been a great experience in slowing down. Yes, taking care of an infant is a lot of work, but there’s much downtime to enjoy life (I recently wrote about reflections on my paternity leave).

I’m not working to build some sort of a portfolio of interests and I’m not trying to turn every hobby into a side-gig or be the most efficient hobbyist to grace this Earth. There’s a balance I’ve been missing, and slowing down has been doing wonders for my wellbeing. Maybe the most productive thing I’ve done was to finally stop trying to be productive.