The pause

If you feel like everything is moving fast around you and you're running out of energy, there is a solution! A scientific career can coexist with a beautiful life!

If you're in academia, you've heard the phrase publish or perish. If not, but you work in a company, you live for financial rewards, productivity awards, or for being included in lists of people under a certain age who managed to be significant in their field. The pressure to perform, achievements accumulation, and the constant comparison with our peers are all things we consider perfectly normal. When combined with the fast pace of modern life, the phrase I don't have time becomes a lament we can stop. How? With the pause!

A pause in music is placed at critical points to make the next notes stronger, to give weight to the following meters. Even in movies, when all sounds stop, we know that something very impressive will happen next. Pause doesn't mean the end. It's a necessity, and we can choose it.

About a decade ago, I used to hear a lot about burnout, whereas now we hear about selective resignation, breaks for travels, mourning, or parenting. What has fortunately changed is that major breaks in resumes no longer scare employers. You can stop running from experiment to experiment and from conference to conference without ruining your career.

So, if you feel pressure, if you've opened countless tabs in your brain and don't know where the noise is coming from, if you're frozen not knowing what to do first, I have the solution. Pause! Go on the journey you want, take the sabbatical you need, take a break after a cycle of studies, stop repeating the same experiment for the hundredth time and go for a picnic in the park. But enjoy it and do it constructively. Be there and listen to your inner voice, let it guide you where you need to go because it will benefit you, not because the career choice you made a few years ago (and possibly today you think it was a mistake) demands it.

From our haste to not give ourselves time to think, reflect, and reconsider, sometimes we make the biggest mistakes in our lives. So today, I tell you that time is something fictitious, made up, and in reality, nonexistent. The only real thing is our mortal nature, which is consumed in races without a winner. Let's claim our right to pause, and let's hope the return is a wonderful crescendo of inspiration and discoveries. After all, even Archimedes found the solution when he took his relaxing bath.