Hey there,

Unpopular opinion incoming: "taking time for yourself" is terrible advice.

But before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that I'm actively writing on Medium again. I recently published two fresh articles that you can check out here:

1. ​The importance of having an existential crisis​
2. ​Don't remember what you read​

These are friend links, which means you can read the articles for free. (If you really enjoy what I'm doing, you can support me with a Medium subscription or a donation.)

Let's jump in!

Stop taking time for yourself

I can see where this advice is coming from. In stressful, difficult times, you should stop preoccupying yourself with all the pesky things other people are saying and just focus on yourself. Listen to your heart. Reconnect with yourself.

But wait a minute.

What does "taking time for yourself" actually mean in practice? I, for one, can only hear blunt thumping when I listen to my heart. And the last time I truly reconnected with myself was when I finally remembered the long-lost password to my LinkedIn account.

But jokes aside -- I do understand the benefits of taking time for yourself. Common ideas include taking a bubble bath, getting your nails done, doing some gardening -- you know, anything that's nice and calming. The mantra is to detox, destress, and fight the depress.

And while these things do sound nice on paper, I see three fundamental flaws:

One, you keep spinning the hamster wheel. To take time for yourself is to pretend you're a machine that has worked too hard and now needs some maintenance. But of course, the only purpose of maintenance is to get back to performing as quickly as possible. I tried this binary operating mode when I first took a stab at full-time writing. The result? My creativity became a depleted fountain, my thought patterns dragged like walking over chewing gum, and my days went by in a rush. Everything in my life became so optimized to function that I forgot what it's like to just... be. In one word, I felt estranged. Estranged from myself, other people, the world.

Two, you can't "take" time by design. Time is a construct we use to make sense of the world. It's a construct that capitalism has chopped up into fine chunks and leveraged to increase production. The language of "taking" time sustains the illusion that you're in control of it (which you're not) and pretends you can compartmentalize life like a game of Tetris (which you can't). Trying to mold time for yourself is about as frustrating and effective as talking a banana tree into bearing pineapples.

Three, taking time for yourself logically rules out other people and causes. It puts too much focus on the (irrational) world inside your head. Which can often be a hurdle for a much-needed perspective shift.

As you're reading this, you probably have one of two thoughts:

• But the concept of "taking time for myself" works for me! Can't you stop complaining already?
• Okay, smart-ass, I kind of agree; what's your suggestion?

Here's my (counter-intuitive) counteroffer: rather than taking time for yourself, give yourself to an outer cause. Get lost in something. Don't try to manipulate time; flow with it.

Whenever I have felt estranged or alienated from the world, trying to find the answers within me was like fighting fire with fire. The more time I took for myself, the deeper I dug myself into my den. True reconnection only happened when I devoted myself to something outside of myself -- other people, the world, a bigger cause.

"Cause" may sound overly dramatic here, but it could take many shapes and forms. It could be a matter, a thing, a subject. Maybe, for you, this is, in fact, typical self-care: taking a bubble bath, getting your nails done, and blasting Spice Girls. If so, more power to you!

But maybe it's more unconventional.

For instance, one of my favorite ways to get out of my head is to immerse myself into a great story. A few nights ago, I binge-watched a "The Boys" on Prime Video, and it became one of my favorite series. In a strange way, it made me feel excited for life again. Sure, people always say too many distractions are bad for you, bla, bla, bla -- you know the drill. But when a "distraction" makes you feel human again, it can hardly be a bad thing.

I guess it all orbits around the idea of feeling alive. Believing that this would require taking time for yourself means to build a wall between you and the world. Because again: the point isn't to bring yourself to the repair shop like an overheated cyborg. It's to embrace the incomputability of being human. It's to get outside of yourself.

Of course, the only caveat of this approach -- to "lose yourself" in existence -- is that it can't be planned or forced. It has to occur spontaneously, organically, accidentally. But then again, isn't this unpredictability precisely what makes it so invigorating?

Until next time,

Stephan

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