Wherever I go, there I am…

Dealing with your own ‘stuff’ can be like playing ‘whack a mole’. You address something in one area of your life only to see it pop up somewhere else.

I used to be a productivity ninja, maybe a productivity junkie. I was so driven to complete tasks to the best of my ability and I prided myself on being the person who could be relied on to get everything done. One of my line managers used to call me a machine which I took as a compliment. It wasn’t. Another of my managers said to me within a couple of months of my new job...

“You do realise you don’t have to complete the whole job description straight away?”

I nodded but inside I was thinking... “Of course I do, what on earth are you thinking?”

There’s nothing wrong with being the reliable one – I will always aim to be that. But it can come with some unwanted side effects. Your reputation as someone who gets things done is likely to mean that if someone wants something done, you may be first on the list to ask.

Again, nothing wrong with that if you have the capacity to help and/or if you have put good boundaries in place to ensure you don’t get overloaded. That’s where I’m at now but I most certainly wasn’t a few years ago.

I would get my own work done and then find it difficult to take a breath in-between that and the next thing on my list. As I was working in an organisation where the work was relentless, this was not a great long term strategy. Keep calm and carry only works for so long. I had (and still have) a strong work ethic. In my head at that time, if I was not working every second of the contracted hours then I was not proving my value.

I hadn’t factored in thinking time, essential for the type of work I was doing and I had stopped noticing what and who was around me. I was just laser focused on what I needed to get done. By the time my annual leave arrived, I was often exhausted and spent, feeling wired and wondering how I was going to wind down.

I see this often in my coaching clients now. I work with people who, when they have a week off, spend the first two days of their precious holiday catching up on sleep, a couple of days in the middle enjoying their break and then start worrying about work for the final two days.

What we know, but often ignore, rest is part of the work, not a reward for it.  

Fast forward a few years. I’m now self employed which could have been another recipe for my old way of working to take hold again and just do, do, do because if I don’t do it, nobody will.  If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.

But since then I’ve done a ton of work on myself and worked out what my internal drivers are. I know what pushes me (personal value linked to work, a sense of over responsibility) and I know how that can both help and hinder me. That awareness coupled with strategies to manage that means that I can honestly say for the last five years I have not felt overwhelmed or overloaded despite still having that internal drive, strong work ethic and a portfolio of work that requires my full attention and focus.

As a burnout coach, I practice what I coach and live by the tools and strategies I share with those I coach. I wouldn’t be a very credible burnout coach if I was running around like a headless chicken or working all hours of the week, feeling exhausted.

And yet...I noticed something last month. Whilst I have this pretty much sorted in my work life, I started to wonder whether that ‘drive’ and ‘machine like’ behaviour hadn’t just transferred over to another area of my life.

I was on a writing retreat in East Sussex (please check out https://www.starcroftfarm.co.uk/ if you’re creatively inclined as it was a magical experience). I had gone with a clear goal. I wanted peace and space to edit my novel getting it ready for self publication this summer. There were three of us there in beautiful cabins each decorated in a different literary style with writing/reading/food goodies waiting for us on arrival. We were in the middle of a farm field surrounded by woods and bluebell trails with a star gazing window above the bed.

And what did I do? Day one, I just ploughed straight into my writing. List of tasks to complete, laser focus and just got on with it for hours. My desk looked out onto the fields but I don’t think I hardly looked up. My brain was full and tired after that stint of full on focus.

The three of us met for a cake break on the picnic table between us at the end of that first day and I got a bit of a reality check. The other two had taken the time to wander around the woods, explore the farm shop nearby or just sit on the steps watching nature unfold in front of us as birds of prey swooped over us and families of rabbits played in front of our cabins. At first I looked at them as if they were mad. What was the point of coming on a writing retreat if you weren’t writing all the time?

Then it struck me that I was playing ‘whack a mole’. I had sorted out my internal drivers to work and live more productively around my work but I had just transferred my machine like behaviour to my writing and had literally forgotten to stop and literally smell the roses (or in this case, bluebells).

So, for the next three days, I changed it up. I still wrote/edited for about 5/6 hours a day but I interspersed it with some yoga on the deck, a walk to nearby Battle through the bluebell woods and a couple of cappuccinos at the farm shop. I remembered to look up from my desk and watch the birds and the light changing throughout the day.

And I completed everything I had planned to do. Not only that, I felt full of energy, full of motivation to continue, and full of appreciation for where I was and the two ladies I met and some fantastic chats with. My end result was the same but the experience was richer for my changes in behaviour. I left feeling energised to continue instead of drained.

One of my red flags for burnout are when I go into ‘machine mode’. I don’t always notice it myself. My husband had actually mentioned that he wondered whether I was transferring that to my writing. I didn’t listen and had to see that for myself. But now I’ve seen it, I’ve made changes to that. I wonder whether it might pop up somewhere else. I’ll be on the lookout!

I wonder if you’ve noticed that you’ve made changes in some areas of your life only to notice some of your internal drivers popping up somewhere else?

If you want a thinking partner to explore that and make some changes, you have my email!