By Rachel Hill

Millennials … we’re this generation with so many advantages: technology at our fingertips, voice-controlled lights, the latest movies streaming on our TVs so that we can enjoy one knowing that we can pause it for a bathroom break or a snack and not miss a thing! So, with all this access and tools to make life easier … why the eff are we so tired all the time?!

Something that’s been on my mind over the past few months has been this idea of our “mental bandwidth.” With so much information at our disposal, it seems that part of our generation’s problem, or disadvantage, is information OVERLOAD. Having access to so much information — life hacks, streaming shows, grocery delivery services, and so on — our mental bandwidth is at capacity, leading to the well-known term analysis paralysis. Wikipedia shares:

“Analysis paralysis … describes an individual or group process when overanalyzing or overthinking a situation can cause forward motion or decision-making to become “paralyzed”, meaning that no solution or course of action is decided upon. A situation may be deemed too complicated and a decision is never made, or made much too late, due to anxiety that a potentially larger problem may arise.”

What Do We Do?

This can be exhausting! So, what do we do? How do we feel better and make better decisions for ourselves and our mental health in the face of all this information being thrown at us?

1. Do a consumption audit.

Take some time to figure out what types of content really matter to you. What hobbies or skills do you actually want to learn? What do you like listening to, watching, and learning about? What matters to you, and what inspires you? Then unfollow, unsubscribe, or mute content that you find yourself mindlessly scrolling past. Because let’s be honest … if it mattered or brought you some semblance of joy, you would have taken longer than two seconds to look at that piece of content.

2. Start batching your time.

One of the best things that you can do for your time and your mental health is to STOP living in your inbox. Matt D’Avella has this fantastic video where he breaks down time batching and how it can begin giving you back your most valuable currency … time.

  3. Let go of “hustle culture.”

A few months ago, I was listening to an episode of The Yes Theory Podcast that talked about the problem with productivity. In the episode, Anne Helen Peterson, author of  Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, shares:

Our identity is so intertwined with our work that when the works start to fail — the work starts to feel hard or less fulfilling or exploitative — everything falls apart with it.

Work in Progress

This is something I’ve personally struggled with for so long now. Particularly with being creative, it can feel so personal when my work doesn’t resonate or “hit the mark.” This for me is a work in progress. I think for now the intent of creating content is to get my thoughts out there, have them processed by others, and maybe have it resonate and be helpful in some way. But ultimately, I’m working on being proud of just putting myself out there.