advice – Half-Blood Kuwaiti

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Work smart, not hard. This is what I tell myself as I do not work at all. The Age of Corona is upon us, and this means isolation, loneliness, and the absence of all routine except that which we impose upon ourselves. For most of us, that’s not good.

“I finally have the time to chase my dreams,” you might have said when it all started. Little did you know your deepest desire is not actually to succeed in life, but to have a really satisfying excuse for why you didn’t. Corona ravages our bodies, but free time ravages our veneers. I listen to my neighbor’s marriage disintegrate through the walls. I listen to my mother tell me that at least she cleaned the bathroom sink today. I listen to my cute friend ask me if she really resembles a turkey or if she just needs to stop looking in the mirror. We are all falling apart.

Deep down, nobody is really that evolved. The problem with most self-help is that it forgets that. It aims too high. I never have that problem. So here are some tips I have developed to help you cope with the emergence of your lower self.

Is that housework really necessary?

Did you know that housework, traditionally women’s work, was designed to be time-consuming and inefficient to keep your wife at home and away from other men who might impregnate her? (Source Unavailable.) Don’t fall for this. Fight the patriarchy. We inherit chores like traditions, not realizing there is a better way.

Take changing bedsheets, for example. Fitted sheets are difficult to change, and no one knows how to fold them. These two problems can be killed with one stone. To begin, collect all of your fitted sheets. Place them on your mattress, each one over the other. It is more work at one time, but it has bought you months of relaxation. Whenever you need clean sheets, remove one. The same method can be applied to pillowcases. To prepare your bed for 6-12 months of clean sheets, buy them in varying sizes since the outermost layers will need to be larger. This may also trick the cashier into thinking you have a spouse and children. Congratulations!

Pro Level: Buy a top-loading washing machine. Change your sheets without leaving your bed and toss them into the washer. Because of its resemblance to basketball, this counts as a workout.

Pit your demons against each other.

You will never be perfect. So why bother trying, or, more accurately, considering it without putting forth any effort? The outcome is more important than your intentions, and a better outcome is often achieved not by erasing flaws but by developing new ones. For example, are you fighting to keep your weight under control in quarantine? Don’t develop discipline! Instead, become too lazy to feed yourself. Create difficulties to decrease your motivation to eat fattening food. Buy fresh ingredients that require cooking, so you can watch them mold while you lose weight. Change your debit card number and place your wallet too far from the sofa for ordering food to be worth the journey. Sleep so much that you are only awake during curfew, when government forces can be relied on to keep you away from takeout. Worst case scenario, block your refrigerator door with dumbbells. If you give in to temptation, at least you will have done some strength-training.

This concept has a myriad of other applications. For example, are you a jealous, vindictive person? Do you struggle to wish others well and/or take great delight in revenge? Don’t waste time fighting these impulses. Instead, try to become too much of a coward to act on any of your desires, good or bad. Alternatively, work on being too dumb and incompetent to inflict any real harm even when you try your best.

Pro Level: Determine which deadly sins you possess and how they might interact with each other. Place bets on which ones will win each day. Try to involve younger siblings and siphon away their allowances.

Alleviate stress created by working from home.

Attempting to work from home can create all sorts of issues. Not only does it become harder to do your job, the increased scrutiny placed on you to prove you deserve to earn a salary in these conditions can be nerve-wracking. Probably you never did much under normal circumstances. How can you pretend to work when no one is around to watch?

Relax. Working from home is really just crying in your own bathroom. Stop focusing on your employer and utilize your talent for pretending to be busy with your family instead. To balance out the excess of bonding going on because of quarantine, claim you have Zoom meetings during mealtimes or “game nights.” Rebrand your bedroom as your office. Refuse to let anyone in without an appointment. This is your chance to become the important executive your parents always hoped you would be.

Pro Level: Hire an attractive secretary for your new “office.” Because some people have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, convince yourself this is charity, not exploitation.

Embrace unexpected skills.

Were you going to write a book during quarantine? Learn to play an instrument? Don’t worry that this didn’t pan out. Instead be encouraged by this truth: You don’t resist all work. You resist important, meaningful work.

The next time you find yourself being unmotivated and unproductive, realize that the problem is not you (maybe). The problem is your goals. Consider trying one of the following instead:

Bake brownies. In mugs. In the microwave.
Plan your wedding in detail to someone you’ve never met.
Brush up on your karaoke skills. You may find yourself more inclined to do this in the middle of the night. Follow your muse.
Research what really tore apart Brangelina.
KonMari your underwear drawer. Do your boxers spark joy? This is a great exercise for getting in touch with your feelings.

Pro Level: Acceptance of ruined plans and shattered hopes is very zen. If you complete this step with enthusiasm, you are likely to become a spiritual person. This is also a good excuse if depression has driven you to stop washing your hair.

Happy Quarantine.

Adults constantly lie to children, and never more so than when they talk about careers. We look to the future wild optimism, believing that the hard part is deciding what we want to be when grow up and not the reality check that comes after it. Many of us, if we could go back in time, would give a few words of advice to our younger selves. These would be mine.

You don’t just need to look at what you’re good at, but also what you’re bad at.

When we think about the future, we naturally minimize obstacles. “I’m not a morning person, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it!” we say, or “This job will actually help me overcome my fear of children!” “Sure, I’m not very organized, but I’ll learn to deal with that.”

People are very resistant to change. In many ways (too many ways), I’m very much the same person I was when I was six years old. We also underestimate human variance. What many people are good at naturally we might assume is easy for everyone. It doesn’t work that way. I know doctors who can’t tell time—teachers who are great with children but struggle with addition.

Sometimes we think that because a job isn’t that “hard” it won’t be difficult for us personally, and this is also misguided. You don’t need to go to college to be a waitress, but that doesn’t make it easy. Many jobs are challenging not for the knowledge they require but for the skills, like communicating, organizing, planning, etc.

You can develop as a person, but you can’t change into someone else, and if you have a weakness now you should assume it will be there for the rest of your life. You can find ways to minimize its effect, but you’re always going to be dealing with it. So seriously consider the parts of your personality that can make certain jobs hard for you:

Are you a morning person?
How do you feel about rules and deadlines?
Are you punctual?
How much human interaction can you stand?
Do you hate either sitting or standing?
Do you have a quick temper?
Do strangers scare you as much as they scare me?

2. Job satisfaction depends on much more than being in the right field.

Even if you’ve found what you’re meant to do, the details of a specific job are very important. For example, will you have an office with a door you can shut? This can make a big difference for an introvert. Also pay attention to your commute. You might as well calculate it as part of your working hours, especially if you’re driving. Technically I work from 7-2:45, but when you throw in transportation, it ends up being more like 6:15-3:45. This is nine and a half hours. See if your pay is worth that before you accept.

If you’re a highly sensitive person, take your stressors seriously. Avoid noisy work environments and make sure your dress code allows you to be comfortable. Even something that sounds as minor as being required to wear high heels can take a toll on you physically and emotionally.

3. “I like to help people” is unhelpful.

Most of us will say that we enjoy being of service to others, that making a difference in the community is the key to a rewarding job. This is useless information. A much better question to ask is how you enjoy helping people.

You can help people by changing their babies’ diapers or by removing their brain tumors. Pretty much every job is designed to help other people because otherwise no one would pay for it.

I realized recently that I don’t feel as if I’m contributing to the world unless what I’m doing is somehow unique. If it doesn’t rely heavily on my own insights, creativity, and ideas, it doesn’t hold much meaning for me. For example, as much as teaching is supposed to be rewarding, I know that many people can do exactly the same thing I’m doing. Students don’t need me to tell them about this or that grammar lesson because I’m the only who knows about it. It provides a service to the world, but it isn’t changing anything. If I were stuck teaching children their ABCs everyday, I would feel completely useless, unless I was the one who had invented the alphabet.

I’m not alone in this feeling, so consider carefully not whether you want to benefit others but how you want to do it. It could be emotional or physical, a unique contribution or a standard service. But it makes a big difference in terms of your job satisfaction.

4. You can be a good student and a terrible employee.

Maybe at one point in time school was teaching you marketable skills, but I think that time has passed. It’s pretty easy to get by in school on your natural intelligence, something valued surprisingly little in many jobs. Teachers average your overall performance. Employers do not.

If, for example, you have an A average but skip several homework assignments, you’ll end up with something like a B. Not bad. If you approach your job the same way, you will end up not having a job.

Conversely, although you won’t learn enough in school to be prepared for your first job, you will still have to go to learn some of what you need to even be considered for a job. In general, though, you will learn much more by doing than by being taught. So you’re better off spending your teenage years learning how to design a website or use PhotoShop than expecting your teachers to prepare you for life.

5. Your job matters because it will consume much of your waking life.

I used to think that a job was important for a steady income but that I wouldn’t get paid regularly to do what I actually care about. So, I could be like, a doctor, and write books on the side! I actually believed this was possible at some point.

Most jobs will wear you out by the end of the day. You’ll be too tired to do much of anything afterwards. I come home wishing I had a stay-at-home wife who would have dinner waiting for me. I have no idea how people with children manage.

Your job matters because it will consume most of your energy, and if it’s not what you love, you will end up spending a lot less time on what you actually care about. Maybe that’s fine if you don’t have some other passion you wish to pursue, but if you do, the time spent at the steady job you take to pay the bills is time lost.

I have a lot of respect and admiration for people who choose to sacrifice a higher paycheck for a job centered around their goals. They’re paying money for a good life, and that’s a whole lot better than paying for money with your happiness. Whenever I figure out how to do the same thing, I will definitely let you know.

Tag: advice

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