wait, rushing isn’t the default? (part 2)
Outside of Late Breakfast, I freelance doing website design and photography. And on Wednesday I faced the problem that anyone who has done digital creative work faces: when something takes way longer than you planned for. I was working all day the previous day and somehow I had only made it through one of the things I needed to get done. I could feel the panic setting in. “When does it go into review? Is there any wiggle room? Will I ever be able to get this done?” Instead of getting dragged along for the ride of rushing through tasks or fooling myself with the illusion of multitasking, I tried doing things a little different:
I decided to hold my boundary of finishing work for the evening at 9:30p (still not ideal I know, but at least I wasn’t working all night and had time to wind down before bed)
Even though I had to wake up early to start working, I started the morning by making myself tea, going outside to ground and put my feet in the grass before starting work.
Not revert to a total frenzy when I started working
So often starting tasks can have this “off to the races” feeling behind them. The feeling of how can I get this done fast enough so I can catch up on the next thing. When I started digging into where this feeling comes from, I was brought back to my inner child.
I grew up relatively routine-less, every morning I woke up feeling like I was already running behind. I think of going to church as a kid and feeling the frenzy that ensued every Sunday morning. The chaos of jumping out of bed to the sound of my parents shouting upstairs ‘are you ready to go?’ when I was still cozy in my blankets totally unsure of the time we were planning to leave in the first place. I’d brush my teeth as fast as I could, grab a shirt and skirt from my closet and by the time I buckled my seatbelt my heart was still racing like I just crossed the finish line.
In my kid brain, I didn’t know what stress was or how to process it. So I’d just wait for it to go away (if it did). Sometimes I would feel my heart racing for hours and just learned to get used to it –– honestly, I thought that’s how everybody’s heart felt. Looking back I was training my body to get accustomed to stress. The feeling of always running behind felt like the norm because that’s what I knew best. I was stuck in fight or flight and the feeling of rushing was all my body knew.
From a young age, I started seeing having someplace to be = stress. And I carried this perspective through most of my life. Whenever I had plans, whether it was going to play rehearsal, dance class or going to something I was looking forward to, I equated the act of leaving the house as stressful because of the somatic experience I associated with it. Left unchecked, this feeling contributed to reacting from the same place of stress that my inner child had learned for years to come. Later in life this showed up as:
Always feeling short on time
I got used to feeling scatterbrained, rushing through tasks and like I’m always playing catch-up. My nervous system stayed stuck in fight-or-flight –– which started to feel like fight and flight (fighting for my life to get everything done while keeping my adrenaline high to keep powering through). There’s an underlying panic that I navigate that never feels like there’s enough time in the day and everything has to happen at once. The biggest lie I tell myself is that multi-tasking will help me get things done faster. Multi-tasking has always left me feeling more spread thin and exhausted trying to hold space in my brain for multiple ideas at once.
Time blindness
Time blindness as defined by Verywell Mind is “the inability to sense the passing of time and it can make nearly every aspect of a person’s life more difficult. The important thing to understand is that it’s more like a sensory issue, not an intentional disregard for time.” This can show up in many ways, and for me it looked like chronically underestimating how much time things would take. I wasn’t stacking commitments because I wasn’t aware of what I was doing, I was stacking them because I genuinely felt that I would have the time. I was constantly agreeing to plans and projects and equally unsure how I would have the time or energy to make things happen.
Overriding rest
The combination of feeling short on time and navigating time blindness led me to override a deep need for rest. Once the adrenaline + cortisol cocktail are in action, it can be challenging to shut my brain off and say ‘I’m done working for today, whatever is left can wait until tomorrow.’ Sometimes it feels like my brain won’t take ‘no’ for an answer and instead tries to get as much done as possible in the name of ‘setting myself up for an easier tomorrow.’ What’s actually happening when I think this, is I’m draining every last droplet of energy that I have for the day and it then takes me days to recover. That cycle isn’t sustainable at all. When I was working at my 9-5, this cycle felt inevitable because of how much work I had on my plate, I would find myself completely exhausted at the end of every week. But as I work for myself, I’m starting to unlearn these cycles, but it’s definitely a process.
These are all things I continue to navigate. The difference is that I’m developing habits that help my nervous system recover from this ongoing stress. Here are a few tools I’ve been practicing lately:
Getting comfortable
Ever notice how the body feels tight and contracted when rushing? Like your whole body feels like a clenched fist? Start by getting comfortable so your body can recognize when it can release any unneeded tension. Before you start working, get your favorite blanket, pour a cup of tea, drink just a glass of water. Be kind to your body for all the ways it is about to support you in finishing your tasks.
Take breaks in between switching tasks
Take a little break to stand up and stretch or get fresh air. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just something to signal to your brain that one task is done and it’s time to start another. This keeps me from just powering through and realizing hours later that my head hurts, I haven’t had a sip of water and I accidentally skipped breakfast and lunch.
Set boundaries for yourself around work
This one has been the hardest to incorporate and also the most crucial. Growing up my mom has always been a project manager which meant she often had early mornings combined with late nights. From a young age, I experienced the stress that comes from feeling like you always have to be ‘on.’ I start by getting clear on when I want to start working and when I want to be done before I begin to help me to prioritize (and re-prioritize) as I start to understand how long tasks are taking.
As I’ve started to weave these practices into my work, it’s become even clearer how engrained rushing has been in my life. Trust in the process, friends, the energy of rushing didn’t take root overnight and will take some time to untangle.