Sunday Edition: How I Get Everything Done (Without Sacrificing Self-Care)
9 tips for productivity without a menty b.
The Sunday Edition is Tuesday’s little sister—off-the-cuff updates I’d bring up over a coffee catch-up with a friend.
“But what if you gave 90%?”
The question came from my therapist and struck me as so foreign, I asked her to repeat it.
“What would you lose,” she clarified, “if you gave 90% instead of 110%?”
Everything, I thought, incredulous. How could she not see it? I was thirty-five at the time, and everything I had ever accomplished could be traced back to my self-discipline. Sure, I was stressed, but loosening the reins meant risking the loss of everything I had labored to build. Right? (Wrong… though it took me another year or so to figure that out.)
When my life began to implode that year, I white-knuckled my way through it, congratulating myself for my ability to “handle it.” It was a strategy that helped get me through the hard parts—showing up to work with a smile, moving into my first solo place, getting dressed in the morning—but the thing about coping mechanisms (think: a glass of wine to “take the edge off”) is that we often go overboard with them. That’s when the glass of wine backfires and becomes a bottle. In my case, the more stressed I became, the more I leaned into self-control and away from self-compassion. My self-discipline became a compulsion that began to consume me.
Throughout my that season, I berated myself for tiny mistakes, and used my to-do list as a form of torment and punishment (I’m sure most perfectionists reading this can relate to the unhealthy satisfaction that comes from negative self-talk). I pushed myself to the edge, until I was forced to reckon with the fact that something had to change. Yes, I had a lot to get done. But not at the cost of my physical and mental health.
When I asked you to submit questions for me a few weeks ago on Instagram, every other question was some variation of, “How do you get it all done?” I immediately thought of all the (lemon) watered-down responses we normally get to this question. They’re often delivered as a headline-friendly cure-all: 10 minutes of daily meditation, wake up at 4:30 AM, a “hack” for your inbox. The thing is: I do have productivity tips (which I share at the bottom of this post), but there is no item on your to-do list more important than taking care of yourself. And the irony is that taking care of yourself can be the thing that allows you to maintain a manageable level of productivity, without a crash or breakdown.
This season is my busiest yet, for a number of reasons. Leading up to it, I reflected on the ways in which I want to show up for myself, and emerged with a list of nine things I’m sharing below. Below are some of the intentional ways I’m taking care of myself this season, so I can get it all done without sacrificing my own mental health:
Be selfish and selective with your commitments. Repeat after me, “I love you, but I love me more.” Like most perfectionists, I want to be everything to everyone. I want to be the person who says “Yes!” to everything, and still gets it all done. While I used to commit to everything—yes I can bring a dessert to bookclub and homemade cookies to school for the kids party, yes I can meet with a stranger for coffee to answer career questions—I’m being much more selective. No, I do not have time to be interviewed for your podcast, as much as I would like to! Yes, I have time to take care of my friend who broke her leg. No, I cannot lead the voluntter team at school. Yes, I have time to watch a mindless rom-com that makes me laugh. Priorities!
Schedule regular, recurring friend dates. I knew this season would be time-consuming, so I request regular, friend dates with several of them to make sure we still see each other. I keep my evenings mostly clear, but also participate in a bookclub that meets twice a month on a weekday evening.
Make sure the basics are covered. A friend of mine recently shared a story with me about a coworker who bragged that she had been so busy, she hadn’t showered in three days. The President of her company turned to her and said, “There is always time to shower.” In my twenties, I’m sure I bragged about only sleeping three hours because of work until I learned: It is always worth making time for the bare-minimum basics. And you don’t get a prize for working all night. Sleep eight hours a night, move your body, get outside, and eat three nourishing meals every damn day. For me this means being strict about stopping work on time (I often vet shows in the evenings, though this hardly feels like work!) and getting into bed every night at 9 PM, which may seem aggressive but is fundamental to my ability to function.
Self-care is a “basic” too. There is nothing like being a female millenial to make you resent the term “self-care,” which is repeated about a thousand times. For me, this includes making time to bookend my days with poetry or part of a novel, and journaling. Even when I’m so busy it feels impossible, I set a timer for 15 minutes and do it.
Rest hard. In a certain kind of hot yoga, there is a series of floor poses broken down by 10-second long Savasanas. (Taught to me by my co-worker Becca). The moment your body hits the ground, the goal is to not move at all to maximize the rest, however short. I apply this to my life: If I have time to rest, even five minutes, I take it and rest hard.
Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this?” You do not have to answer every email or read every article open right now in your tabs. Be mindful of when you are creating busywork (and be especially aware of when you are using your to-do list to punish yourself or prove yourself). To that end, I am also in the midst of a “no buy” freeze until this season is over, to both save money and reduce additional to-dos like returns. (I’ll be writing more about this soon!) In short: Simplify, simplify, simplify. Speaking of…
Make things easier on yourself. I could write an entire article on this alone, and I liked the way Jen Shoop conceptualized this, but if you’re about to come up against a busy time, audit your life for the ways you can make things a little easier. At the end of last year, I bought myself a coffee maker to replace my daily drive thru trip and have changed little things for ease—the way my closet is organized, the placement of countertop items, my podcast app, and grocery list are all streamlined.
Create a self-care toolkit. Because I’m not great at generating self-care ideas when I need it most, I keep a note on my phone title “me, myself and I” so I can return to. It includes: Go for a walk with a podcast, make a music playlist, write a note to a friend, do a puzzle while listening to an audiobook, take a hot shower. Note that nothing on it is revolutionary!
Give yourself grace. This is probably the hardest thing on this list for me, but I’m not always going to get everything done. Nor am I always going to be able to do everything on this list. And that’s okay too. Remind yourself that you’re a human, not a robot.
And with that, here are a few actual productivity tips:
“Touch everything once.” This is one of my favorite mantras for getting things done and avoiding procrastination—just do the thing the first time you pick it up, instead of vowing to return to it later. Answer the difficult email the moment you open it (instead of returning to it five subsequent times), put the duvet cover on the duvet instead of dropping it on the bed, wash your dishes instead of putting them in the sink.
Compartmentalize your days. I rarely take entire days off, which I’ve found through trial and error actually works best for me and allows me to take ample breaks every day instead of one fully “off” day.
Don’t succumb to notifications. Notifications are addictive and offer quick dopamine rushes, which is why we can feel compelled to go check our phones or inboxes during lulls in work. Resist the urge to constantly check your email (if work allows, check it once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening) and keep your phone out of sight.
Time your work. I keep an analog timer in my desk, which I set at different intervals throughout my work day to keep me engaged in the task on hand. I’ll set 15 minutes for checking email, then one hour on a specific work project, 30 to review another work project I’m prepping to start, 45 minutes for a heavy lift work assignment , etc. It’s a reminder to focus.
Big fan of the “thank you” card. How do I get invited to Maggie Rogers’ dinner with Jane Fonda? Is Strava (yes, that Strava) the hot new dating app? Like open mic at a coffee shop, via YouTube. Caught somewhere between: this blanket is so dumb/I need this blanket. Girlhood in the age of Ozempic. A fun interview between Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt. Love letter from the afterlife. A camera recovered by a receding glacier sheds light on a 50-year mountaineering mystery.