I think having pressure in my life can be kind of like having the wind blowing incessantly behind me.
If there is a little wind, it helps me progress a little faster, but blows my hair into my face, which is annoying, and, depending on what I am trying to accomplish, it may outweigh the tiny bit of good it does to my speed. If I am standing still and/or trying to eat, it is a disadvantage to have any wind whatsoever. If I want to go faster, but I also want to be accurate, the wind can be more bother to factor in than it is worth. However, if I just want to go as far as I can as fast as I can, I take all the wind I can get.
I think we need to identify what we are trying to accomplish to know whether pressure, and how much, will help or hinder us. If all we really want to do in a project is stay in the same spot, recuperate, and to just have the constant blowing go away for a while, then adding deadlines and timers would be counterproductive. If we want a perfect grade and to remember every possibly helpful detail in the process, cramming a month's worth of work into one week is probably not the ticket. However, if we want to break records, we should recognize that the wind can be used to our advantage.
I use pressure as a way to get myself to do things a lot. Music recitals and competitions, Bible Bee, Spelling Bee, trying to fit high-school geometry into six months, wanting to graduate high-school when I was sixteen, and now college. The first time I remember consciously using deadlines as a way to improve without any outside suggestion was when I was five just after I learned how to read. I set a goal to read my Little Bear Treasury in one day. The whole thing was probably only four stories, but it seemed like a feat at the time, and I kept trying until I got it. A little later I set the goal of reading the whole Chronicles of Narnia in a week, and when I was ten or so I wrote five chapters of a book every week of the summer. The book was incredibly boring, but I did not miss one week. (On the other hand, I have not really set any deadlines for posting on this blog. You are a witness of the result.)
Pressure can be a really powerful thing, especially in some types of people, but in those same people it can be a really dangerous thing. There is no way to miss out on the important things in life like constantly having to meet unimportant deadlines, and, for some, there is no way to kill the enjoyment of something like giving it a deadline. Not everything in life should have pressure, and some things should only have pressure sometimes. I do not have a deadline for every last thing I do in music or academic pursuit, but I usually try to have at least one deadline in one area of those things, because I know it will motivate me to grow in them like nothing else will, but if I get to much I will forget my love for them in the midst of the stress. (Also, I might get shingles. Just saying.) I took last week completely off of school and piano. My family and I had a great time at Mount Rainer with Grandma and Grandpa Eddy. I turned nineteen. I slept ten to fifteen hours a day in attempt to recover from a cold that hit me a few days before we left. Then, we had people (now friends) from Kansas that we had never met, friends from Virginia that we had not seen in ten years, and our old babysitter and her two little girls at our house over the weekend. I did not study during that time, either. Did I feel guilty? Well, yes. Habit is a hard thing to work against. But I knew that the purpose for that week was not to break records for how much college work I accomplished.
I use pressure as a way to get myself to do things a lot. Music recitals and competitions, Bible Bee, Spelling Bee, trying to fit high-school geometry into six months, wanting to graduate high-school when I was sixteen, and now college. The first time I remember consciously using deadlines as a way to improve without any outside suggestion was when I was five just after I learned how to read. I set a goal to read my Little Bear Treasury in one day. The whole thing was probably only four stories, but it seemed like a feat at the time, and I kept trying until I got it. A little later I set the goal of reading the whole Chronicles of Narnia in a week, and when I was ten or so I wrote five chapters of a book every week of the summer. The book was incredibly boring, but I did not miss one week. (On the other hand, I have not really set any deadlines for posting on this blog. You are a witness of the result.)
Pressure can be a really powerful thing, especially in some types of people, but in those same people it can be a really dangerous thing. There is no way to miss out on the important things in life like constantly having to meet unimportant deadlines, and, for some, there is no way to kill the enjoyment of something like giving it a deadline. Not everything in life should have pressure, and some things should only have pressure sometimes. I do not have a deadline for every last thing I do in music or academic pursuit, but I usually try to have at least one deadline in one area of those things, because I know it will motivate me to grow in them like nothing else will, but if I get to much I will forget my love for them in the midst of the stress. (Also, I might get shingles. Just saying.) I took last week completely off of school and piano. My family and I had a great time at Mount Rainer with Grandma and Grandpa Eddy. I turned nineteen. I slept ten to fifteen hours a day in attempt to recover from a cold that hit me a few days before we left. Then, we had people (now friends) from Kansas that we had never met, friends from Virginia that we had not seen in ten years, and our old babysitter and her two little girls at our house over the weekend. I did not study during that time, either. Did I feel guilty? Well, yes. Habit is a hard thing to work against. But I knew that the purpose for that week was not to break records for how much college work I accomplished.
Which leg of the race are you in? When, and how, should you apply pressure to manage your time accordingly? There is no one answer for all people all the time, except that whatever we do should be for God's greatest glory. I guess what I am saying is: perhaps if we identify what we are trying to accomplish by the things we do, we can better know when pressure will help us, and we can overall run with greater purpose and focus.
1Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.
And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.
Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air.
But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. (NKJV)
No comments:
Post a Comment
We appreciate your comments so much that we like to know who they are from. Please leave your name with your comment!