This is a text about self-optimization.

I'm writing it while I'm supposed to be in a lecture.

Actually, I don't have any time for it.

I don't have any time at all, so I didn't feel at all and actually only sometimes.

Since my studies started again in October, I have always had the feeling that I have forgotten something. Mostly that's also true. An app on my mobile phone keeps me informed about what I haven't been able to do in the last few days. Lots of empty boxes next to my pending tasks. At least the app also collects all the completed tasks and crosses them with a thick black line. Feel good. When I tick off, I feel really productive for a moment. Unless, of course, I forget.

I reached the last year in my law degree.

The crucial phase of studying for the exam has begun.

These last semesters - the revision course - are known to turn their graduates into light-shy index card zombies.

Known for being the most leisure hostile in college.

But I was confident for a long time.

Downright cocky.

Learning six or seven hours a day, that was definitely doable.

Even when I was at school I had a lot more lessons!

So no problem at all, I thought to myself, and I deliberately forgot all the examination phases of the last few years.

My optimization balance is unbalanced

Besides, it's true too. It is quite feasible, the rep. I still have a problem. I could call it a work-life balance problem. But I don't, because people who seriously say “work-life balance” also say “cold brew” to cold coffee and “communal workspace” to the open-plan office. I'm not a start-up founder from Berlin Kreuzberg (nothing against start-ups; everything against cold coffee). But I cannot deny that my social life, my sleep rhythm, my pile of unread books, my running shoes and all the surfaces in my apartment that may need to be cleaned have not received the sensitive attention I like to give them in the last few weeks would. Only my Netflix watchlist is happy about visits at times that would be better invested in a good night's sleep.There is definitely an app that could be educational.

But as promised: This is a text about self-optimization.

And my self is currently sub-optimized (un-optimized?).

My optimization record is as unbalanced as my monthly expenses and unbalanced as my current diet.

Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit too, but I'm sure not #thatgirl.

And I don't think I will either.

It has become a cliché to talk or write about self-optimization.

About the pressure and the dangers of trying to get the best out of yourself.

About starvation diets, polyphasic sleep, self-tracking and dopamine fasting.

I don't know if anyone can do that at all

That probably has everything to do with this capitalist performance society. We know that. Or maybe it's social media's fault after all? This constant comparison, that can't be a good thing, I've always said anyway. No, no, better get up at 5:30 a.m. and meditate extensively, really relax and feel how everything dissolves. But please every day, otherwise there will be no slowing down!

Because that is the perfidious thing about the promise of an optimized body and mind.

It works, even if you already know that it is actually a lie.

I know very well that I wouldn't be happy to study seven hours a day, play two hours of sport, then meet friends and browse the Buddenbrooks to sleep a little.

I don't know if anyone can do that, at least I can't.

And yet I would secretly like to be someone who, contrary to all expectations, somehow manages to do it.

The all-round mega-fantastic years of life

I am sure that I am not alone with this feeling. Rather, I suspect that it affects large parts of my generation. And it is closely linked to another promise or a truism or a popular saying of the parents' generation. Namely: That the early twenties, the years of study or training, definitely have to be the absolutely best, most exciting, most eventful and all-round mega-fantastic years of life. The years of self-discovery, excess and adventure, in which you have oh so much time because you are not yet working “properly”.

But unfortunately, even for people in their early twenties, the day only has 24 hours.

And I don't feel like reading Buddenbrooks after a day at school that starts at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 6:30 p.m.

The time of study can be the best in life.

But watching Netflix and eating pizza have to find a place in it, as well as Hegel seminars and broccoli.

Lina Kujak

(22 years old) is studying law in her sixth semester at the HU Berlin.

Relationship status to the subject: “It's complicated.” I would like to know who went through 2020 with an umbrella and a black cat under a ladder.