Be Careful of How Much You Are on Overdrive
There are those days during which we get overloaded and simply give up in front of the sheer volume.
And then there are those which are just as busy but for which we find one thing that motivates us and then we are “on a flow”.
This happens at work for most of us and, as a result, the motivation obtained is focused on that one task of getting the work done.
I just had one of those days today. I was extremely busy, in a constant rush, trying to catch up with tasks instead of being over them in advance or even on time.
I then had a phone call with a colleague and succeeded in taking a half hour break laughing and talking about various topics with her. This was really pleasant and brought an honest smile on my face for the time of the day.
However, when the phone call was over, I was unfortunately even more behind in what I had to handle. This is when I reached this peak of overdrive.
If you have grown up or were an adult in the 90’s and beginning of 2000, you have certainly had a computer running on old versions of Windows. Unless you bought a really good one for a lot of money, there was a risk that the technology would overpass it quickly. Especially if you enjoyed pushing and discovering this new horizon that was the Internet.
I was still a child back then but was extremely curious and amazed at all the things the internet was providing us. I loved how downloading allowed us to get our hands on anything so easily.
But then again, downloading a lot and starting playing games which were too heavy for my computer often pushed it to its limit.
The sound it made at that time, this overdrive type of “phewwwww” sound was both scary and thrilling at the same time.
I knew my computer was giving its best to satisfy whatever need I had given him and it motivated me. I was acting faster, trying to finish whatever I was doing quickly, looking outside of the box to find a solution and stop this scary thing.
It was pushing me to be on overdrive as well.
Being on overdrive as a person can be great as it stretches your limits, helps you think on your feet to discover new potential horizons.
However, if you stay in that state for too long, after-effects will start to appear. For a computer, it would result in a “simple” sudden shut down. For humans, tiredness may fall upon us suddenly as well. In such cases, rest is crucial to be able to be active once more later on.
Easy enough right?
Well, there is a bigger risk to take into account. If this happens too often for long periods of time, there is a risk of breaking that link that keeps us one. For a computer, just as I experienced when I was 14, it may result in an implosion with no possibility of ever getting back what was in it. Nowadays, most of our life is spent an laptops and cellphones; so losing either brings great sadness in us.
But I believe that this is much worse when we, humans, do the mistake of being on overdrive for too long periods of time. While we probably won’t die (not that we couldn’t though), there is a risk of never recovering fully.
In such cases, the overdrive’s advantage itself could be completely lost. All this out-of-the-box thinking, and this work produced much faster than predicted, etc. All this could be counter-balanced by days, weeks, or even months or years of “bare minimum work”.
This busy day after a god-awful few weeks, tired me out so much I can feel this overdrive slowly getting to the point of no return. For this reason, I plan on trying to rest as much as possible this weekend so that, just like any computer, I can be turned on again soon enough.
