what if i never start again?
Sometimes, I have a bad week. And nothing really *happened* I guess, just the slow hum of more Pandemic Time. I've been jokingly referring to my mood as a Pandemic Pout, but you could also call it "hitting a wall", "reaching my limit", "throwing a big ole temper tantrum".
And even though I've built an entire business around helping people learn how to rest and feel less guilt and shame about it, I still fought myself all week. Here is just a small sampling of the unhelpful things my brain threw up at me this week!
Your pandemic is nothing - very little has changed!
You're being a baby!
You just want to be lazy and are using "the pandemic" as an excuse!
Other people have it so much worse - who are you to be pouting??
If you don't get to work RIGHT THIS SECOND you will never work again and this will be the moment where you look back and say, that's when my whole life stopped being useful and I slipped into the cavern of Terrible.
But underneath a lot of those conversations with myself is the idea that I both don't deserve to have my feelings or rest, and that if I do rest, I will not stop working again.
I didn't invent either of those ideas. They didn't come out of nowhere. They're baked into a bunch of cultures I'm steeped in every day - the idea that my worth boils down to how much I produce, and that there is always someone who deserves rest and care more than me. I can know intellectually that my thoughts aren't helpful, but it still takes a little bit of practice to not ACT like they're true.
So this week, I'm trying to practice being a person who experiments with rest, and practices showing myself more self-compassion. I'm collecting data - if I play 20 minutes of Stardew Valley over lunch, how do I feel? How does that change if I play 3 hours? If I sleep in, do I feel more rested or more anxious? What about going to bed earlier? What would a day off in the week feel like? What can I do on my off days to limit screen interaction?
I don't have the answers - I'm in the middle of navigating work and life and all the rest of it under these conditions like you are. But I do know that I do feel differently from day to day. Things feel a little more possible. Maybe I needed some rest, and some grace. Maybe you do too.
working with avoidance
One of the hardest things I've found when coaching individual clients, and giving feedback in the community, is how to:
help people get out of avoidant patterns WITHOUT shaming them or making rest seem like a negative outcome.
Because look - sometimes you need a day off. Sometimes you need to only work two hours a day. Sometimes, I have no idea, as a coach or a person who is not you, what goes into your decision making about what to do, and when.
But as a person with mental health challenges, I also know that sometimes I'm tired and I need downtime, and sometimes, I'm avoiding things.
So here is my methodology for identifying, interrogating, and working with avoidance. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but I've found this is a good system to check in with myself.
Am I avoiding things?
I started to compile a list of things that I do when I'm avoiding things, so that I had a mental awareness of which activities sometimes, or often, or always, were avoidant:
Sometimes avoidant:
Cleaning, cooking, running errands, tasks that are due eventually but not now, "fun" work
Often avoidant:
Reorganizing my office, "research" not tied to an active project, "surfing" websites
(Almost) always avoidant:
Netflix.
So it's usually about the balance - one or two sometimes avoidant things aren't usually an issue; three or four days of only those activities can be.
What's going on?
Next step, interrogate (gently) the issue! These are good journalling questions that I use:
Do I feel better or worse at the end of the day of work?
What project, milestone, or task do I feel most blocked in?
What project, milestone, or task feels the most undersupported right now?
Have I been cutting out activities to work on the blocked thing? (skipping workouts, etc)
What is the next step for the blocked thing?
What are some alternate activities that are not avoidant but aren't the blocked thing that I can work on if I need to?
Everyone's line between avoidance and something else is different, and it can also shift. So it can take some time to tell the difference, and take even more time to develop an action plan that isn't self-punishment but also moves you out of avoidance if you need it.
Working with avoidance
Here are my general rules for working with avoidance - I'm not perfect about them all the time, but they do give me a good framework and places to troubleshoot.
Evaluate regulary - whether that's the end of the day, every other day, or at another interval - so that you can see when projects fall off track and address it.
Don't shame - just adjust. No one needs to add blame and guilt into already sticky situations.
When in doubt, move. Change locations, change chairs, change tasks - moving in any direction can often have ripple effects.
Self care as a baseline non-negotiable helps keep the rest up, so that avoidance is easier to see. If you're collapsing out of pure exhaustion regularly, it can help to address that first, so that you have a more clear baseline state.
Identify your absolute no-go activities. I have an "anything but Netflix" mode - I can literally do anything I want, from working out to cleaning to fun admin work - as long as I don't watch Netflix. This helps me with the movement piece, and often a few wins in other areas gives me the confidence to show up for the blocked thing.
Reward frequently, heartily, and with joy. If I make progress on a sticky thing, I basically throw myself a parade. The more I associate working on hard things with pleasure, the better I feel.
the finish line: how do you manage your time and energy when the end is in sight?
I have had a few seasons of intense productivity before a final deadline - turning in my dissertation, launching courses, etc. You’d think I’d know how to do it! But while I was working, I noticed a lot of things happening in myself, and in my clients, like:
Apologizing for working long hours
Feeling guilty about the irregular scheduling
Shame about falling away from habits and routines that are proven to be helpful
Physical symptoms - exhaustion, fatigue, mental fuzziness that isn't easily solved by some extra sleep or a cup of coffee
Fear (rational or not) that it will always be like this, or never end
All of this got me thinking about whether we have to, or should, consider the period of time right before the finish line as a particular type of work. I take it as a fundamental premise of my coaching practice that people need to rest, every day. People deserve self care and they do not earn it through work or productivity. Things that recharge us ultimately serve the work, and therefore we do not need to barter with them. But how does that square with a period of time when you know that you have to work to get things done because you're nearing the finish line? So here are my guidelines on how I decide what constitutes a finish line situation, and tools to survive in them!
Two weeks is the limit. In high school, my French teacher said "anyone can do anything for two weeks" as a way to motivate us to study really hard for an AP test, but I've often returned to that as an idea as an adult. I both use it to motivate - it's hard to do something for two weeks, but it doesn't last forever! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! - but also to check myself: am I really sure this will only last for two weeks (or less)? If you're looking at your schedule, and the finish line is more than two weeks off, it might be helpful to think about ramping up, rather than sprinting, as your metaphor. You can be gradually increasing the work time, but not going ALL out, up to the two week mark, but you cannot be pushing yourself to go ALL OUT for more than that without some serious consequences.
It's okay that things look different during that finish line time. In a perfect world, I always get 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I always have some sort of movement, I make food that makes my body feel good, I take time to meditate, I have creative pursuits, every day has something fun....but the finish line is not the perfect time. It's okay! The more work I create for myself, apologizing to others, feeling guilty, feeling shame about what I didn't finish earlier or more gracefully, the harder the finish line is going to be. Giving yourself permission to do things differently under the circumstances is the key to starting to let go of some guilt.
You can enjoy your other work. In true finish line time, I use other tasks as a reward. For example, when I was really working hard on my dissertation over the finish line, teaching or even cleaning the house felt good - doing anything different felt like a relaxing break! So going into those moments and tasks, trying to be present and really enjoy them, without worrying about what I wasn't doing, helped me not forget the rest of my life and tasks, but also get a little space from my main focus.
Rest and relaxation doesn't have to be all or nothing. It also helped me to start being really purposeful about the self care I was doing. I couldn't afford a whole day off to vegetate on the couch, but I could take a walk around the block with a favorite podcast to just look at some trees. Rest didn't have to take up hours - but I could be really present for it, and really enjoy it, making the most of what I could do.
Decide on your non-negotiables. My chronic illness and mental health demands that I sleep at night. I cannot pull all nighters. I need at LEAST 6 hours of sleep - so this was my hard line. I could skip workouts, eat a little junkier/faster than normal, but sleep was going to happen, whether I felt like I had done enough or not.
Let other people know! I told my parents, I told my friends, I told my husband: this is crunch time, I could use your help! This let people know I might not be as responsive over the phone, and gave me a little space to withdraw into my work cave without raising alarms, but it also gave people a chance to support me in concrete ways. My husband made dinners and didn't give me a hard time about spending less time together, and I could offer him in return a commitment to the end date - this wouldn't last forever.
Respect the spirit of the finish line. Once you cross it - once the draft is in, the project launched, the deadline passed - you have to stop working. That's the only way this works - crunch time only really works if it's time limited. So once you hit it, it can be really tempting to look back and say "look at everything I got done! Imagine what I could do if I kept this up!" RESIST THIS. You cannot keep this pace up forever - so give yourself a break. Absolutely take the best strategies and what you've learned about how you work to apply it to your normal life - but you will suffer real consequences to your health and well-being if you never end the crunch time.
self care week: active vs. passive rest
even when i was little, i was bad at taking naps. i was often put in my room for “quiet time”, encouraged to sleep, but invariably i spent time in my room making up fantasy worlds for my stuffed animals and talking to myself.
to this day, i have trouble watching TV without doing something else (knitting, coloring) alongside. i have to work REALLY hard at meditating, i’m more likely to have a bad day if i don’t have a plan and just “go with the flow”, and settling down enough to take a nap is impossible unless i’m actively unwell.
so when (well-meaning) people tell me to rest, i used to get really mad:
I CANNOT BE STILL AND REST LOL i should just keep working right?
and then it occurred to me one day while i was in a fitness class that i could use the term “active recovery” and frame some of my activities as rest. because it isn’t true that i never rest, it’s just that in order for me to truly unplug, i usually need to have my mind and/or my body engaged in something.
when you’re working out, active recovery is something that you do during a physically strenuous activity that keeps your heartrate up and your body in motion between sets or repetitions - like jumping jacks in between your weight sets. passive recovery is something that you do to bring your heart rate down - like stretching on the floor afterwards. both have uses. both are important.
some of the things that i have found that feel restful (ie, i feel recharged afterwards and ready for what’s happening next, instead of depleted) that fall into a more active category:
cleaning my house
gardening
reading fiction books
walks with podcasts or audiobooks
hiking
workout classes (where i’m not in charge of what we do! what a luxury!)
coloring
doodling
journaling
paint by numbers
knitting
cooking
time with friends and family
yoga
my list is very specific to me, of course - and is bound up in all kinds of able-bodied, class, and skin color privilege. but i stand firmly behind the concept - sometimes the things that fully engage your body and/or mind can allow you to recharge in different ways than more passive forms of resting can.
so when you’re thinking about how and where to put (more) rest into your schedule, here are some guiding questions:
when does your mind feel most engaged?
when does your body feel most engaged?
are you tuned in to the different kinds of “tired” you can be? - physically, emotionally, mentally, socially etc
what things leave you feeling clearer after you do them?
what kinds of rest leave you feeling less clear, or not as rested, after you do them?
Yes, there is a way to rest better.
I was working with a client recently who was concerned about taking a planned vacation for fear they might disrupt "momentum" in their writing. We discussed strategies for staying connected, of course, but I mostly encouraged taking the vacation without reservation - rest when you've scheduled rest, no matter what the work is like.
I believe there are three main types of rest:
Collapse - The rest that happens when you drive forward and forward until your body literally shuts off. Think falling asleep on the couch when you thought you were reading, or when you have to take a week of couch time because your sniffles that you ignored turned into a massive sinus infection. You might feel better physically, but not restored.
Distracted Rest - This kind of rest happens when you take a break (pre-scheduled, accidental, forced, whatever) but your mind doesn't break with you. You could feel guilty for not doing enough to "earn" a break, or you could be stuck somewhere without your materials and feel bad for not working when you could have. Maybe you're out somewhere with family/friends/partners and you want to be with them but also, your work is on your mind. This kind of "rest" feels frustrating (maybe also for the people you're with!)
Actual Rest - This kind of rest happens when your brain and body are on the same page. You might leave your phone at home, maybe you read books for pleasure, maybe you just take a walk around the block with your favorite podcast. But, you feel rejuvenated afterwards because you let yourself rest, body and brain.
If it isn't clear, I think you should aim for actual rest whenever you can. Sometimes, you can't avoid collapse - sickness, deadlines, life itself can all make us need to close up shop physically. But I encourage my clients whenever I can (and try hard to remind myself) that we can rest and recharge effectively without taking a week-long phone free vacation. It can be as simple as reframing that time as "rest" and not "time not working."
I often hear clients tell me that they are using a night off or a nap as a "reward" for hitting a milestone, and I get the impulse to use these chances away from work as motivation to make sure the work gets completed. But the message that reinforces is that we are only "allowed" to rest or relax when the work is completed, not simply because rest and lives away from academia make us healthier and more balanced. We don't earn rest - we need it. And if when we do get a chance to take a break, so many of us stop ourselves from fully enjoying it by feeling guilty, or otherwise staying hooked into the work and not into the fun activity.
So if you have something scheduled and you feel behind? I will almost always advise you to go anyway, and do your best to fully enjoy it. Put your phone away, let your emails sit until morning and be present where you are. Even if your work isn't done, sometimes the time away can be recharging, and you'll attack the work the next morning with a renewed energy level and clarity. A healthy balance between rest and work can help to keep you healthier and happier. But, it even makes the work better, supporting a sustainable pace rather than a cycle of "grind and collapse" ruled by deadlines. So rest up, work better, feel better!