The Art of Adjusting

Last month, I started watching Totally Spies as part of learning a language.

There’s this language learning technique called the movie method. Its where you watch a show with English subtitles first to understand the story then rewatch it without subtitles or with the subtitles of your target language. You write down the words or phrases you recognize or the ones that felt important or interesting then add it in Anki as custom cards. It’s surprisingly fun.

Somewhere between memorizing vocabulary and following the plot, I found myself paying attention to something else. If you’ve never watched Totally Spies, it’s about three teenage girls who are constantly interrupted by a giant machine that literally yanks them out of whatever they’re doing because the world needs saving. One minute they’re shopping and the next they’re hanging upside down over lava, accidentally pressing the wrong gadget, getting captured, escaping, getting captured again, and somehow still making it home to relax at the end of the day. Everything always goes wrong but somehow… everything works out.

Of course it’s unrealistic. It’s a cartoon. The villains always lose and the girls never seem permanently traumatized by anything that happens to them. I kept noticing the same thing every episode: they never spend very long panicking because they adapt. They simply make a new plan instead of stopping to mourn the old one.

And I thought, that must be a nice skill to have.

Whenever life starts feeling overwhelming, when my plans unravel halfway through the week or something changes before I’ve had the chance to mentally prepare, I like to pretend I’m one of the girls from that show. Somehow that tiny mental shift helps me snap back into problem-solving mode instead of panic mode. By convincing myself I’m on some ridiculous secret mission, my brain stops asking, “Why is everything going wrong?” and starts asking, “Okay… what’s Plan B? What’s the new mission?”

As an adult, I’ve realized that life has absolutely no respect for your schedule. It rarely waits for you to finish one thing before handing you another. There’s work, your social life, your health, hobbies, books waiting on your shelf, languages you want to learn, about fifty other interests competing for your attention, and dreams that tap you on the shoulder every now and then, asking if you’ve made time for them yet. They don’t take turns.

That’s probably why I’ve become so attached to my little systems: Google Calendar, Google Reminders, Grit, a digital journal, and a paper to-do list. They’re less about productivity and more about giving my brain somewhere safe to put things so it doesn’t have to carry everything at once. Having a system really matters if you don’t want your thoughts turning into complete chaos.

Aside from that, having a daily routine gives me something to return to when life starts feeling messy. Without it, it’s easy to lose track of everything, jump between tasks, and end the day wondering what you actually accomplished.

With that said, your system doesn’t always need to be perfect. I had the mistake of being a perfectionist. The moment I missed one task or skipped one habit, I felt like I’d already failed. Then I’d procrastinate, lose all my momentum, and eventually abandon the very routines I’d spent so much time building.

These days I try to remember that small progress still counts. Some days are simply heavier than others. You won’t finish everything.

Speaking of feeling heavy, I’ve also become fascinated by the idea of transmuting difficult emotions into something else. Stress, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, negative thoughts—or maybe something someone said that lingers in your chest a little longer than it should. Instead of letting those feelings consume you, maybe they can become fuel. Not for revenge, of course, but for creating, learning, improving, or simply taking the next small step forward. It’s not about pretending those feelings don’t exist but about giving them a better purpose. There’s something comforting about believing that something painful can become something beautiful.

Lately, I’ve started thinking adaptability might be one of the most underrated skills a person can have. When plans suddenly change, when something goes wrong or when you have to think on your feet all of a sudden, it sounds like an amazing skill to have the ability to adjust in real time instead of adjusting after you’ve had time to make new schedules and rewrite your routines right. Its like a superpower that can be applied to alot of things. I don’t know how people become like that yet.

Anyway. I started watching Totally Spies to learn a language. Instead, it accidentally gave me a new skill to aspire to have.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very important internet research to do now. Oh, to become the kind of person who can quietly handle whatever life throws at you without falling apart. Sounds like a dream.