What is the productive version of Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino?

Unearthing the productivity monster. Oh-oh, here she comes. Watch out, girl, she'll chew you up!

I am sitting in the bathroom stall at a roadside Starbucks, one I frequent often for a quick bathroom and snack break on my drives back to San Diego from LA. It’s a drive I do often enough that I’m used to stopping at this particular Starbucks for its roomy parking lot and clean bathroom that doesn’t have a door code.

I just ordered a beverage that I’d never tried before: a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino. This is out of character for me. I sit, pondering what I’d just done—and why. I always get Starbucks on the way home from LA as a little treat, usually an iced coffee or a vanilla latte, but today I felt… different.

I used to travel to LA frequently for work and to see friends, but hadn’t in—could it be—nine months already? Or longer? I couldn’t even remember. I’d done a lot of traveling in the past year, but no long solo drives. And I love long solo drives. They fill me with peace. They are my “me time,” when no one can reach me, when I can’t respond to emails, and when I can listen, uninterrupted, to podcasts or books.

Traveling always gets me out of myself. Out of my routine, my habits, but also my thoughts and beliefs. Any travel, even a quick 24-hour road trip, reminds me that we can easily step outside of our everyday lives. That we can make different choices. Take a left turn down an unknown street. It reminds me that there are always options, new destinations, opportunities. It’s exhilarating.

I just finished Jennifer Romolini’s book, Ambition Monster, relating to 99% of it so deeply that I devoured it in less than three days. From the title alone, I knew it would resonate. I didn’t know who she was, but turns out, she got the job I’d been dreaming about my whole life: the big city fancy magazine editor job in the glory days when magazines were still glamorous. It was also very juicy.

At the end of the book, she has a beautiful career moment—much like the moment I’m in now—when she finally defeats her inner “ambition monster,” taking a job that her ambitious peers advise against. It was unlike her to take a risk, but this new job is natural and easy, and she can set her own pace. She finds freedom in working on her own terms, and with a delightful team who genuinely wants to work with her.

I’ve been ambitious about my career—to a fault. However, I left my ambition monster behind with the company I sold. I still have a desire to excel and do meaningful work, but I set firm boundaries, preventing it from running my life. Been there, done that.

What I discovered, after setting those boundaries, is that there’s a deeper, insidious monster lurking beneath my ambition: productivity.

This realization comes to me, in this random moment, in this Starbucks bathroom.

I’m not sure if it’s the much-needed unstructured time away from my routine or the uncharacteristic Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino I just ordered.

Why did I order that?

Am I cosplaying a carefree person, the kind who leisurely orders a Caramel Crunch Frappuccino because they want it? They’re in the mood? Imagine, being a person who chooses joy and YOLO over “the usual.” Madness.

OMG, I think, as I begin taking an inventory of everything I do each day. Every single aspect of my life focuses around productivity—around a goal! Everything is a means to an end. I’ve even designed my leisurely activities to be productive. If I don’t see movement on my self-imposed mental progress bar, I become frustrated and move on to something that does.

This is a manifestation of my core belief system—black and white thinking. It’s a prison. I have an imaginary scale for which choices are either “productive” or “unproductive.” This scale, I can never balance. It is perpetually tipped in one or the other direction. It is all muscle memory. It is a monstrous effort to undo 40+ years of thought and behavior patterns.

Productive = working toward a goal = good.
Unproductive = not working toward a goal = bad.

Making a healthy beverage choice = making progress = good = productive.
Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino = not making progress = bad = unproductive.

If Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino is an unproductive choice, then what is the productive version of Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino?

What is the belief system-reinforcing choice?

Stupid, boring-ass iced coffee, that’s what.

Somehow I, out of routine and feeling carefree, looked at the menu today and decided to bypass the well-worn iced coffee pathway in my brain.

After washing my hands, I look in the smudgy Starbucks bathroom mirror. I stare at this self—Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino me—and snap a spontaneous selfie.

This is unproductive Jaime, I think.

While I also want to think that means “bad,” I refuse. Nope, brain, not today.

And, yes, the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino was fucking amazing.