As someone who constantly complains about the mountain of deadlines she has every semester, I would enjoy taking a break — at least in theory. Honestly, the idea of a break and being done with all my commitments is the light at the end of the tunnel that gets me through every finals week. But, a few days into summer, with nothing to do but while away my time aimlessly, I am itching for any work that makes me feel less useless. 

I love going home for breaks and spending time with my family and friends, and doing that for a week is restorative. But after that, I crave the familiar rhythm of ticking tasks off a checklist. Realising that I may need a break from taking a break, I found a sense of purpose in bureaucratic tasks like filling out my parents’ visa application — a tedious process requiring way too many documents — or replying to emails for a club.

During the school year, I constantly feel that my actions are contributing to a tangible outcome, whether it is cooking a meal, finishing an assignment or grabbing lunch with a friend. My brain is so used to the dopamine rush from checking off each task that now, it feels weird to not experience it. 

I derive great pleasure and satisfaction from each of these tasks, which endlessly rotting on the couch while binge-watching my 11th show for the semester often eventually stops providing. With the infinite possibilities through streaming services, even finishing the new season of a show in record time feels hollow — there’s no time to feel any sense of achievement when I am already on to the next show within seconds. 

After my brief visit home, I arrived in San Francisco a few days before the start of my internship, giving me the time to reflect on my innate need to be busy and perpetually complete tasks. I realized that being busy doesn’t necessarily equate to being productive or contributing towards my goals, especially in the long run. Yes, finishing my homework and getting good grades contribute toward my bachelor’s degree, but it’s also important to focus on goals beyond the next five years of my life. 

Chasing the dopamine rush, I often prioritized and focused on the tasks that provided immediate tangible results, rather than those that helped me grow in the long run. While sometimes finishing the immediate tasks is easier and, honestly, a really good and much-needed ego boost, we need to strike a balance between working toward our goals for the short and long term. 

I decided to try this with my internship, which seemed like the perfect eight-week experiment — short enough to recover from and pivot if things go south, but long enough to see if I am making progress. 

As I now enter the third week of my internship, I can say that changing my mindset to focus on long-term goals alongside the short term takes some work. While my short-term goal is to hopefully get a return offer, which I am working toward by trying to stay on top of my tasks and communicating with my team, my long term goal is to build stronger connections within the field and gain exposure to its different facets so that I can find my ideal career path.

While these lofty long-term goals don’t necessarily fit into the checklist and provide the same dopamine rush as meeting a tight deadline in the nick of time, I am still taking steps to achieve them. 

Some of my investments in long-term development include speaking to three new employees outside my team every week and noting one new, thoughtful lesson from the day. To be clear, “lesson” doesn’t mean realizing that “CAGR” stands for compound annual growth rate and it’s not just a buzzword thrown around by finance bros. Rather, it’s supposed to be more meaningful and actionable so you can utilize it in the future. 

It can be something as simple as taking notes during a meeting to make the other person feel respected, or something more technical, such as the importance of problem-driven problem-solving to determine the root cause. 

I am not sure how successful these steps are yet, but I’ve realized that while the dopamine rush will wear off, the rewards of the long-term investment may stick around for a while. Perhaps, trying to balance the two is the correct way forward — the next time you tick off one short-term task from your checklist, balance it by taking a step toward your long-term goal too.

Edhita Singhal is a rising senior writing about life lessons she has learned in college in her column, “Thinking Out Loud,” which runs every other Wednesday during the school year.