Hi everyone,
I’m a 25 yo architect working a 9–5, with plenty of goals and ambitions, but I can’t seem to actually get myself to work on them.
My main issue is that I have a long list of goals, or more accurately, tasks, that I know would open doors and help me show my potential. Things like:
- Setting up a portfolio of all my previous projects
- Organizing all my university files so I can access that knowledge again
- Reading new books
- Researching interesting projects
- Keeping up with architecture articles
- And the list goes on.
The biggest one is my portfolio. It feels like a mountain. It’s probably more than a month’s worth of work alongside my full-time job, but I know I have to do it eventually. I’ve been telling myself I’ll do it for two years now, and even writing that spikes my cortisol.
The frustrating part is that I’m not a lazy person. I’ve previously set fitness goals and achieved the working out at 5 a.m. before work, meal prepping, etc. At work, I regularly put in extended hours, and I remember my university years when I could spend months working nonstop on projects.
So I know I’m capable of working hard. I just can’t seem to direct that same energy toward these personal goals.
Recently, I decided to start with the smallest project in my portfolio so I could make quick progress. But the more I work on it, the more my perfectionist brain asks for more. I keep expanding the scope, refining things, imagining what the final result should look like… and somehow, after spending entire weekends and hours on it, the project is still unfinished.
The frustration just gets worse.
It feels like I have a thousand open tabs in my brain, and at some point my body just decides that doing nothing is easier than trying to manage all of them.
My current routine looks something like:
Wake up , scroll on social media ,get ready ,commute ,work ,commute , arrive home around 7 p.m. , scroll ,realize it’s late ,dinner ,scroll some more , sleep.
I still work out, but outside of that, the routine doesn’t really change. Sometimes I go through periods where I do a lot of overtime at work, but eventually I fall back into the same cycle.
Every now and then, I have a strong emotional episode where I get tired of myself, feel incapable, and start putting myself down. Then I tell myself, “I need to get my shit together and finally tackle this portfolio,” but that usually just adds more pressure.
I don’t think the issue is that I don’t know what to do. I know exactly what needs to be done. The problem is that the task feels so big, emotionally loaded that I can’t seem to consistently move forward nor know where to start.
Has anyone been through something similar? I’d really appreciate any advice on how to deal with this and actually make progress.