Get’cha head in the game 🏀

Last week we discussed how vital it is to not compromise on the most important things in life even in survival mode.

This week we’ll look at the other side of the coin.

In order to be hyper-focused on my goal of getting a job, I did still make sacrifices on some less important parts of life.

I wanted to keep my head in the game, so to speak.

Now, forgive me this tacky GenZ cultural reference, but we can compare my situation to what Troy Bolton (played by Zac Efron) faced in the first High School Musical film (2006).

He had met his new girlfriend Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) and started to enjoy singing as a hobby with her, but his basketball teammates reminded him to get his head back in the game.

He couldn't afford to have his focus diverted at a time when they had a big basketball tournament coming up.

Naturally, to drive the point home, the team sings the legendary song Get’cha head in the game while dancing with basketballs…

If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you check it out since it’s a true early 2000s classic.

So Troy had to reorder his priorities. Would he give more of his attention to Gabriella and sing with her in the school’s theatre production, or would he be a people-pleaser and stay as the basketball guy he’d always been?

To protect my mental bandwidth, I had to make a similar decision. I knew I couldn’t spread my attention too wide. It was meant to be a short-term trade-off, but it still required discipline to see it through.

The trade-offs I made concerned mostly hobbies, entertainment, and creative pursuits.

I spent less time on watching series and movies than usual. I didn’t write as much for fun. I didn’t sing as much for fun. I didn’t go to museums, concerts, and other events as frequently.

It’s not like I would’ve abstained from them completely, but I just decided to keep them at a minimum.

Then again, sometimes it was hard to know what the minimum amount of fun and relaxation is for me. There were periods where I tried to optimize too much every waking hour, and it led to an overexertion burnout of some sort.

So for people like me there is always the risk of over-optimizing, but once you’ve gone too far a few too many times, you start realizing where your minimum threshold of relaxing lies. 😀

Naturally, this kind of survival mode isn’t ideal to sustain for too long, and it’s crucial to still take some days off during the survival mode.

That’s what I did at the end of December when my parents came to visit me. During those days I tried to forget my goals and relax as much as possible.

And then I ramped up my searching cadence again for around two months. In total I sent 142 CVs or outreaches between the end of November and March, which is a lot given how much I personalized each outreach.

(I chose not to send the same CV en masse to hundreds of companies, even though that could’ve also brought in a good result.😄)

Looking back, these last few months felt like an eternity, but actually two full months of unemployment is nothing these days.

So keeping my head in the game probably also accelerated the process.

You know what they say: “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”

That’s the art of selection that leads to excellence. You have to drop the ball on something to free up time for the main goal sometimes.

Troy didn’t end up keeping his eye on the ball as intensely as I did, though.

With the help of some Disney magic, he managed to win the basketball championship AND sing in the spring musical callback with his girlfriend (plus, Gabriella’s science team won their decathlon on the same day too…). They didn't do it alone, though—it took all their friends coming on board to make it work.

This begs the question: would I actually have needed to make the trade-offs I did to achieve this result?

Hard to say.

I’d say creative writing, singing, and doing sports were the aspects that I missed the most in my survival mode, and of course I could’ve carved out more time for them if I really wanted to.

I could’ve written these newsletters and maybe even gotten some indirect job opportunities through having a better online presence.

But I accept these ‘what ifs’ because it’s just so much simpler to focus on one major goal at a time. It didn’t make it necessarily easier, but it was just simpler. Also, I didn’t feel very inspired by life anyways in my survival mode, so it felt somewhat natural to not do as much creative and recreational activities.

Fortunately, now my sources of inspiration flow better again. ✨

My survival mode has served its purpose, so I’ve started to reintroduce some of the things I’ve abstained from in my life.

Hence why I’m writing this article on a Saturday afternoon in a library just for the pure fun of it. 🥳

…

The takeaway is simple—figure out what you can let go of temporarily and stick with your decision.

I’m curious to know: would you have made these trade-offs in my shoes? and are you making these kinds of trade-offs currently in your life?

There’s nothing wrong with not making these sacrifices, but if there’s a big goal you want to reach relatively fast, it's an approach worth trying.

Phew! That was a long one to write.

My fingers are freezing since the library is a bit cold.

Probably a hundred tourists have circled around this reading hall while I’ve been writing, but I haven’t even noticed them, being so hyper-focused and all… 😂

Ok I’ll stop using that word right now.

I’ll try to be a bit less hyper-focused for a while now and just enjoy life.

Have an elegant weekend!

Bisous,

Elle

Subscribe to my YouTube channel: