I graduated with my Master’s degree in Analytics from Northwestern on December 15. For me, the degree was grueling to say the least, cramming 16 courses, 2 required analytics consulting projects, a data hackathon, an internship + fulltime job search, 2 extracurricular client engagements, and a research paper that I published all in the space of 15 months. A pandemic was also thrown in for good measure. I deserved a break.
I’m set to begin my job on February 8 2021. This means that I will have about 2 months of ‘me time’. What a perfect time to finally get back to re-connecting with friends, reading my favorite books, catching up on my favorite Netflix shows, and finally getting a regular workout routine going. And yes, also writing (semi) regularly on this blog. This is wonderful!
However, in reality, my past one month of vacation has gone something like this:
- Wake up at 12:00PM (Noon)
- Aimlessly scroll through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Internet for an hour while laying in bed. Fall asleep again as needed.
- Begin the day at 1:00PM by eating breakfast (do I still get to call it breakfast?), taking a shower, and talking to mom.
- It is now about 3:00PM. The time is apt for an nap. The previous 3 hours spent eating and sleeping were exhausting. In any case, 10 hours of sleep last night was definitely not enough.
- Wake up in a sweat at 4:00PM; the sun is setting, and my room is gloomy.
- Time to cook up some lunch (again, am I stretching it by calling this a lunch?)
- It’s now 5:30PM! The day is almost over. Panic! I need to do something remotely productive to convince myself (and my inquisitive Mom) that today was worthwhile. Answer: Gym
- I leisurely lift some weights at the gym (the leisure part is important), and am back home by about 7:30PM.
- I then spend an hour cooking, and begin eating by around 9:00PM. I’m done by 10:00PM. I multitask by watching some Netflix.
- I then wash the dishes and call my family. I talk to them for the better part of 2 hours, and it is now about 12:30AM.
- It is now time to end the day with how I began it: scrolling through my apps. (this time preferably in a different order). I’m asleep by 2:30AM, ready to begin the next day.
This is how I’ve spent the past 30 odd days, with minor variations (call a friend, read a book, sleep some more) to induce novelty.
Gone are the lofty goals I set for myself, such as reading one (good) nonfiction book a week, writing on this blog, finally getting my driving license (yes, I have failed it three times, each time perplexingly the fault of the instructor), upskilling myself in analytics, etc.
The tragedy isn’t that I had a paucity of time: it was that I had too much!
In Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek writes about the notion of destructive abundance. Simply put, Sinek notes that having too much of something leads to bad stuff happening. I find it ironic that people marooned at sea often die of dehydration, despite being surrounded by water!
My experience has led me to believe that destructive abundance is the hallmark of our modern life. I’ve found it everywhere. Some examples below:
- We can swipe through all the attractive singles in a city, yet are still hopelessly single.
- We are “connected” with any acquaintance we made at any point in our lives through Facebook/Instagram, yet still feel hopelessly alone.
- We can access the world’s catalog through Amazon, yet still are hopelessly in dearth of something!
- We have access to more entertainment than one can hope to consume in a lifetime, yet are hopelessly (and chronically) bored. It’s soo hard to find the perfect show on Netflix!
You can doubtlessly find examples destructive abundance in your own life, but here I’d like to focus on a salient one: online dating. About 39% of all couples in the United States are introduced online in 2017. (read more here)
On paper, the idea seems fantastic. Dating is now an unconstrained optimization problem. Enterprising men (and women) are no longer limited to those they go to college with, live in the same building, or those they work (or workout) with. They can now access every single single person in the entire megapolis at the swipe of a finger.
Yet, the amount of uncertainty is debilitating. Due to the abundance of ‘attractive singles’ out there, there is a persistent fear of investing too heavily (read: “writing more than a 5 line message”) in one’s current match. Hell, your match may “ghost” you before you do, creating a Cold War type, MAG (mutually assured ghosting) scenario. Even if a first date (however unlikely) does occur, the much-awaited ‘going steady’ phase may never happen. Who knows what the next swipe may entail! Better to keep swiping than miss out. And finally, assuming we are now among the microscopically small fraction of couples who are ‘going steady’ (and letting the world know through their amorous Instagram posts), there is a marked preference to not compromise in the face of the slightest disagreement. What if your next swipe actually bring you closer to the ‘one’ who actually likes pineapple on their pizza, and pours the cereal in before the milk!
It is no surprise that most Americans feel more frustrated and pessimistic than hopeful and optimistic about prospecting for one’s paramour online. (here)
Amusingly, the solution to this dilemma might just be to inject some much needed scarcity. Less might just be more in this (and other) cases.