Dear Reader,
I have always been the type of person to watch a pot of boiling water — in more ways than one.
I can’t just “go do something else” when I’m focusing on a task. It’s either me and a rusty old kettle in a staring contest or I forget about it entirely and let the whole operation boil over, and the house burns down.
It’s only in the past few years that I’ve realized that like pots of boiling water, young children and most plants, almost everything in life needs the time and space to grow.
In practice, I call this concept the Crock-Pot method. It reminds me that there are some times in life when white-knuckling a situation is not going to help. In fact, it might make things worse. There are just moments when you have to assemble ingredients, throw them in a pot, plug it into a wall and then go do something else.
One of the best afternoons of my entire life happened in the sixth grade, when a boxed set of Horrible Histories books arrived at my house at the same time as one of my best friends. We both completely abandoned whatever plans we had made before and planted ourselves on the couches in my living room, books in hand.
As the buttery sunlight moved its way across the room, we flipped through page after page in complete silence. Occasionally, we would read funny bits aloud to each other, laugh and promptly return to our reading. We didn’t talk or try to read the same book or even sit on the same side of the room. We were just each doing our own thing, but together.
That afternoon, and that friendship, stand out in my mind as one of the few times I didn’t force myself to put on a performance for someone else or overanalyze whether my friend was having a good time. I just let myself relax into a fun afternoon of reading, with the added bonus of being able to tell someone the best parts of each book. It taught me that just like some dishes need a day or two to rest, even the most important relationships can benefit from a step back or just a moment when both of you can relax into your time together.
The Crock-Pot method works for actual work as well — once you’ve thought enough about something, you can leave your brain running in the background, and when you revisit a subject or a story or a problem days or weeks later, instead of the jumbled mess of concepts and failed starts, a shiny new essay, solution or idea is waiting for you.
For me, “running it in the background” was the solution to my inability to stop thinking about something. If I told myself that I was moving the issue to my subconscious and revisiting it later, I gave myself freedom from worry.
The summer before applying to college, my anxiety reached peak levels at the thought of having to write a personal essay that summed up my entire life. It prompted a frantic (and thus completely useless) inventory of everything I’d ever done up until then, and when that turned up nothing, I spiraled rapidly.
But, luckily, I had given myself time. And after the second week of running my frantic thoughts in the background and just focusing on my summer job, I sat bolt upright in bed, and scribbled down an idea that turned into my actual college essay — and got me in here.
The Crock-Pot method doesn’t work for everything; obviously, when you’re figuring out your future, not every task is hands-off. But it often makes me a more effective person — making sure my ingredients are prepped, a recipe is planned and my schedule is concrete means that I get more time to just be myself and not a walking, talking existential crisis.
Rather than worrying every day about becoming a healthier, cooler, better person, I just work slowly and unconsciously at the little things — eating one vegetable at a time, texting one person back at a time and looking for classes, jobs and hobbies that improve my life.
There’s a time for big picture thinking, but there’s also time to let those big dreams take care of themselves for a while and start to do what you can while trusting that when you’re ready, you’ll be able to return to your problem, or your Crock-Pot. And the house will not have burned down or boiled over.
If you have a pressing problem you need advice on, or a response to this, email opinion@dailynorthwestern.com with “Best Guess” in the subject line.
Mika Ellison is a Medill senior. She can be contacted at mikaellison2025@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.