Lately, I haven’t written approximately twenty things in this blog. I was overworked — and I completely lost an ability to focus. Overtraining can lead to traumas. Overworking can lead to a lot of bad things, including some mental health issues. Like loss of focus. Attention deficit, if you will. (Disclaimer: I don’t claim to have ADD, I haven’t been diagnosed.)
This is a situation I have seen before. Working on too many things at once. This time, I want to make sure that I don’t burn out, and that, when the objective situation changes, I can emerge on the other side of it still a functional and subjectively happy human being. Right now, there are too many meetings.
First, I stopped paying attention in the less relevant meetings. Defense mechanism at play. You know, the kind of lots-of-people, inter-teams meetings. Meetings where you show your face (if you can afford, with camera off), and keep doing some other work — because otherwise, how are you going to do your work? How about a red flag here?
Next, I couldn’t focus on very relevant meetings. Unless I have to lead the meeting, or actively discuss something, I doze off into other areas of work. I don’t literally space out, I merely switch to five other things. Even with a special, conscious effort, it’s still impossible to force myself into following the meeting like I used to just a few months ago.
There’s a hectic conversation going on in the back of my mind, about all of the things that I’m not doing, while I’m trying to do this one thing, focus on something.
This stretched beyond work, and affects all areas of my life.
My all time low? All at the same time:
- Sitting next to my kid at bedtime, when all is dark and quiet (part of bedtime routine)
- Meditating (as it is the only guaranteed quiet time, or maybe I lost some time previously during the day)
- Answering messages.
(3) of course annihilates (2), and it does only negligently make me happier that it’s not work messages. Well, it does make me feel worse — it’s chatting with a friend, answering a message from twelve hours ago. That’s how bad it got. I cannot keep a conversation with a friend anymore. Jack is a very dull boy, if you know what I mean. Losing my mind kind of situation.
Working too much never helped anyone. Googling ‘burnout prevention’, yes. Cutting down meetings, yes. Asking myself if I should cut out attending meetings where I can “afford” to switch attention anywhere else? A thousand times yes!
And yet, as many of us, I’m incredibly better at giving advice than at following it.
Incremental steps for the next week for me:
- Evaluate all meetings, and cut down to the very essential.
- Keep meditating, even in the sucky mode that you witnessed today. But don’t multitask, for Buddha’s sake.
- Write in the morning. Anything, generate handwritten texts just to train your mind to stay with something one.
This third line. I’m not a fan of “morning pages”, for some reason. To me it feels less like a space for putting anxieties to paper in hopes of attaining freedom, and more like unnecessary constraints to the said freedom. And yet, writing with pen and paper is an excellent way to learn to focus again. I’ve been finding myself with ideas, some better, some worse — completely unable to get enough focus or traction to put them on paper or on screen.
There’s something to admit and accept — I’m broken in the areas of focusing, and I’m going to re-learn the skill. It’s going to be a process, it’s going to take time. It’s not a matter of telling myself “do this” — I need to give myself space and time to learn.
- Go for runs. Physical activity helps. Nothing more to it. It’s essential. I want to have focus and energy? I run.
- If I feel like the above isn’t helping enough, and if I feel like I’m burning out, I’m taking a day off. No matter how “big and important” the day is. No guilt, no bad feelings. Day off, and no agenda. Be very physical, don’t accomplish anything. Something to make me feel good enough, as I am.
A very important note on all of the above. Sleep. Even more critical than the physical activity. I can’t expect to be sane unless I sleep enough.
What I want to achieve as a result, first, is not “being a better employee”. I want to keep my attention on my closest people — being with family members, without the “thousand of things to do” mindset. Drives me crazy, but my autopilot is the thousand things right now. I have to switch the default, I have to learn again. Being with myself fully, too. Being able to listen to music — just that. I haven’t done that in a long time, I realize. Not listening to music while doing something else. Actively, listening, completely in the music. Paying attention.
(I specifically made a huge effort in focusing on writing this text. Without googling advice, without switching to anything else. Not all is lost on me.)