What the Perfect Corn Chip Can Teach You About Time Management

Nothing. Time management is a lie. Keep reading.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

The microwave dings, my bowl of beans and quinoa steaming. I reach into the bag of corn chips and pop one in my mouth, absentmindedly, then stop mid-opening the microwave. The chip is perfectly crunchy, airy, one of those delicate crispy bubbles right in the middle, and the saltiness explodes on my tongue. I have to stop myself from sighing. Perfect corn chips are few and far between. I stand there for maybe 30 seconds relishing the moment.

I ate this lunch at the dining table instead of my desk. I would have considered that a waste of time before.

I was a person with a to-do list, a perpetual desire to get more stuff done. I bought into it all: productivity hacks and hustle porn, morning routines, and inbox zero, multi-tasking and scheduling tools. It turns out my problem wasn’t that I didn’t have an efficient online tool to create and schedule daily posts on several different social media platforms. The problem was that paying for three months of that subscription and using it only once showed me that I didn’t want to build a social media presence in the first place. Although I know it’s generally accepted that unknown writers (like me) must build a social media following before having a chance at making a living writing, I just don’t want to do it. I got close to hating writing once before, and this would definitely send me right back there again.

It’s not an easy decision because I got a little taste of what a single story with a good (slightly shady) headline and a controversial topic can do on Medium (41K views and $2,500+ in earnings). It’s tempting. I thought: I can write these kinds of headlines all day long. I can write about these kinds of topics and crank out half-ass, clickable shit. I could make some of my other stories do as well or better if I spent some time marketing them on social media.

But I can’t do it. Social media to me is the equivalent of looking at glossy magazines and catalogs in the 90s. I get overwhelmed. Whether I fly through physical pages or scroll through their digital counterparts, I end up comparing myself to others and get depressed. I know it will happen and I do it anyway. Even worse, I start…