Why can’t I slow down, even when I’m exhausted?

Over-tired Over-achievers! Graham here.

About two months ago, both Honor and I fell in a great big heap. And neither one of us has really recovered just yet.

As regular readers will know, we spent most of this year pushing. Hard. 

The Accelerator. Kinder Mind. Meetings with politicians, meetings with potential funders, Honor advising the Royal Commission into Mental Health, to name just a few things.

Woof.

In retrospect, it wasn’t surprising we hit a wall. 

In fact, a different way of saying that would be something like: we both worked our arses off for months on end, achieved more than we would usually manage in two whole years, and then took a much needed break. 

So why is that never how it feels? 

This issue: that age old duo, productivity and guilt. 

Woop!

The “getting things done” treadmill

You may know this feeling. 

You find a project to really sink your teeth into, whether it’s your own project, or something at work. You pour yourself into it, working harder than you’ve ever worked on anything. 

And it maybe even goes well! Or you at least don’t fuck it up. 

And then what?

You feel, empty? Satisfied, but in an ‘okay, what now?’ kind of a way?

You are immediately back on the “getting things done” treadmill - either because you work a 9 to 5 and the work doesn’t stop, or you’re a contractor and still have to pay the bills.

Or because even when you have earned yourself a little breathing room - the opportunity to step back and recoup for a while - you can’t quite believe you actually deserve it.

So perhaps you do take some time off, but you spend the whole time feeling edgy.

Nervous.

Guilty.

Who do you think you are anyway??

For me right now, there’s no external pressure to keep up the ridiculous pace of work we set for most of this year. Anyone around us can see that simply wasn’t sustainable.

But there’s plenty of internal pressure. 

To be self-employed is to constantly feel you are about to be found out for something. 

You really think you can get away with designing your work practices around your personal needs and preferences? Who do you think you are??

It doesn’t matter what research I read about how most people only really have about three good productive hours a day. It doesn’t matter that many people whose work I admire stress the importance of flexible work schedules. There’s always this underlying guilt when I’m not working a full week or the usual 9 to 5 schedule.

But here’s the kicker. I feel the same even when I get things done. We’ve achieved more than enough this year to slow down and take things a little easier as the year winds down. But the internal interrogation remains. 

You really think you can get away with taking your foot off the gas right now? This is your one shot! Who do you think you are??

Feel the guilt and do less anyway

So I haven’t figured out how to escape the guilt yet. But I have done a pretty impressive job of taking things off my plate in spite of that guilt.

My new mantra:

Feel the guilt and do less anyway.

I’ve been taking random days off. I’ve been packing my schedule with gardening and trips down to the creek. I did a four-day silent forest retreat. 

I’ve even been visiting the library multiple times a week.

In short, I've been decidedly not crushing it. 

Throughout this transformation, I feel simultaneously like a piece of shit and like I’m finally calming the fuck down and getting in touch with what actually matters.

(Quite the combo!)

I still don't know if this total slow-down is a good idea, whether it's taking me closer or further away from my goals in life. But here I am. It’s been a guilty, confusing, wonderful couple of months.

Not every day can be like this. But oh when it can. . .

“How should a person be?”

One particularly pleasing side effect of slowing down? I’ve been devouring books.

Including one brilliant novel about this very question of what happens when you take your foot off the gas. Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be?

Heti spends much of the book grappling with the fact that not only can’t she finish writing her play (that someone has already paid her to write, and which is long past the original due date), she can’t seem even to bring herself to care.

She spends her days meandering, judging her lack of progress, and navigating several overlapping epiphanies about just what she really wants to do with her life.

It’s really a book about what it means to be anyone at all (as opposed to someone else entirely, say, someone with far more ambition and purpose.) It's about how the only thing holding our sense of self together at any given point is whatever story we’re telling ourselves about just what it is we’re supposed to be doing.

Which, when you lose that story, can make things... complicated.

“When I strip away my dreams, what I imagine to be my potential, all the things I haven’t said, what I imagine I feel for other people in the absence of expressing it, all the rules I’ve made for myself that I don’t follow - I see that I’ve done as little as anyone else in this world to deserve the grand moniker “I”. 

In fact, apart from being the only person living in this apartment, I’m not sure what distinguishes me.”

At another time, I can imagine these words unsettling me. But right now, I find them freeing.

The fear of squandered potential

The feeling of guilt, so often it’s underpinned most keenly by a fear of squandered potential. 

This current version of me - who finds it very hard to remember just why it was I would ever want to work so hard on anything as I did just a few short months ago - the current me feels guilty most of all toward that past me. The one working evenings and weekends and pushing, pushing, pushing.

Because here’s the thing. I’m incredibly proud of the work I've done this year. I have faith it will set us up extremely well for wherever we go next. But that past me was a stressed little bunny. 

I feel tense and overwhelmed at the best of times, but past me? He really took it to another level.

The guilt stems from this point in particular. It’s not just that I hit the wall and needed to stop pushing. It’s that I stopped wanting to push so hard. The story of who I am changed. For now at least.

(Gorkie puts it this way, which about sums it up.)

Reading Heti’s book, I've been wondering if maybe “wanting it enough” simply comes and goes like the tide. When it starts to ebb away, you can resist it. You can let your guilt and fear of squandered potential spur you on to swim against that tide until you simply can't keep swimming. 

Or you can pull back and wait, to see what the tide does next.

(Just look at Sheila Heti. She eventually turned all this ambition-less angst into a great book.)

A slower step

None of which means the work stops completely. There are bills to pay, newsletters to write, and further Big Feels experiments to dive into. 

But for the next few months they’re coming smaller, slower, and unfolding at whatever pace they need to. 

For the next little while I’m sneaking up on productivity. (For one thing, this was going to be a simple ‘check out this old article’ issue of the newsletter. Then all this came out. So there ya go!)

And speaking of things still happening. . . 

Big Feels: Sydney Edition is next week! Eek!

I will in fact be leaving the house for this one, but the good news is… it’s at a library! So not that far out of my current comfort zone.

Also, I may have a very special guest with me at this one (99% confirmed. Ooooooo.).

This one's a free event thanks to the good folks at City of Sydney and Green Square Library. But you gotta book your spot here.

And speaking of other things still happening. . .  

A *big thanks* to all you mental health professionals who filled out our survey about what it’s like to work in mental health and have big feels of your own. The response was massive. We’re still digesting all your deep thoughts. More on that soon (but not too soon eh.)

And finally, speaking of things not happening. . .  

We floated the idea of doing a Melbourne version of the Sydney event, but the response to that was less hell yeah! than usual, so we'll shelve that for now. (Maybe y'all are all feeling the same way I am??).

Something for when the tide flows back in perhaps.