The Distraction Love Posed to my Productivity
And why I failed at the test of work-relationship balance
I didn’t choose this topic because I’m into science or neurology (I’m not). I chose this topic because it’s something that has a direct effect on me.
Just a few months ago, I realized that I was having lapses. I had just entered a new romantic relationship and all seemed perfect, until it didn’t anymore.
Let me just give some context. I call myself a productivity junkie, not because I am one of the most productive people in the world, but because I am obsessed with the idea that I have all the tools and resources to be as productive as I can. And I love to make ample use of such resources. I am also very judicious with my time. I love to plan my day ahead, and when things don’t go as planned, I feel super stressed. I can also be very spontaneous just to cover up my laziness sometimes. So if I oversleep in the evening, I will be up at midnight to cover up for lost time.
Then came the relationship. And shortly after that, I slowly began to feel my productivity wane. I would wake up in the morning and feel like I just wanted to lie in bed all day and feel loved. It’s funny but true. The butterfly emotions were getting too much for me to handle. When I was finally able to force myself to sit at my laptop, I wouldn’t be able to get in more than 20 minutes focus before my brain started to wonder. I would start thinking of the last fight we had, or something that was said to me with a possible double meaning, and I would just tune off for the next 10 minutes.
It went on like this for days, until it became too obvious to bear. Now it would be wrong to attribute my reactions to this distractions to the feeling of love, but honestly, I just had no idea about how balance worked. Or, let me be clearer about this:
I did not want to balance this feeling with my work.
Because I felt like both of them would be affected, and I would be giving out suboptimal levels of love and productivity every single day. Who wants that? So, I decided to adopt a weird method which worked for me for a while. I decided to pay full attention to one at a time. So at points where I was being 100 % productive, I pushed out every other thought from my head and pretended like the other person did not exist.
And then I crashed.
I was forgetting deadlines for my work because we had quarrels over the smallest things, and I was having mood swings and bouts of anger every morning. I just couldn’t work the way I used to, and I began to resent him for that. When I voiced my opinion out, it seemed like I was being ungrateful for having a relationship where someone actually cared for my feelings, and I was prompted to learn to balance my work with my relationship. I eventually broke it off the two months later, as I noticed that the symptoms I was experiencing could lead to depression if not curtailed.
So what is the purpose of this long epistle? Well, I brought this up for many of us who may have been or are still in romantic relationships and may have experienced a change in the way they work. I just want to inform you that you need to learn to embrace that change as the new normal. Love can be even more distracting when you have those initial butterfly-in-your-stomach feelings where you are head over heels for your partner.
There is nothing wrong with romantic love (or at least I don’t think so).
But before going fully into it, you need to know the kind of changes it comes with. Are you ready to compromise some part of your work or productivity? And would you be comfortable ding that? Personally, I wasn’t and it was worsened by the fact that the person I was trying to make such sacrifices for didn’t acknowledge or even notice my efforts. I was only asked to do more continuously, and I has to ask myself
Do I give up every part of my work or productive habit before I feel like I am doing the right thing?
And no, this is not just a toxic relationship situation. Even when the person you love is acknowledging your efforts to balance productivity with love, you are still going to make that sacrifice for the relationship to work, no matter how big or small. So now that you know there has to be a tradeoff, ask yourself when going into your next relationship:
“How much of my productive habits or work life am I willing to sacrifice for a relationship?”
And
“Will it really be worth it in the long run?”
Thanks for reading!
