Sara Sweat, MA – Founder, Monarch
This past Saturday, I began my annual campaign to bring about Fall weather through sheer force of personality. Mind you, it’s still the end of August in Tennessee – which means it’s 95 degrees outside.
But, this is my tradition. Every year, when I’ve had all the summer I can stand, I start sipping pumpkin spice lattes and turn my home into a cozy retreat complete with warm lighting, apple scented candles, and fuzzy blankets.
For the first time in a long time, I had almost nothing scheduled. So, I put on one my favorite Fall movies – Practical Magic.
The movie is transporting. All I have to do is watch and my body is convinced that the air is crisp and the leaves are turning and that I am the kind of woman who has an herb garden and a sister who would help me bury a bad guy in the backyard.
I sat down. I pressed play.
And then, from the kitchen, the dishes started talking.
Wouldn’t you feel so much better if you just cleaned up these dishes in the sink before you settle in?, they said out of nowhere. I ignored it. No – this is my time. It can wait.
Then the laundry chimed in. The load of wash was done & needed to be switched over. It wasn’t gonna hurt anything to let it wait a couple of hours, right? I mean, it’s not like mildew grows that fast.
But, that’s when I noticed crumbs on the floor by the couch, right at eye level, as if someone had placed them there to specifically distract me.
And, then the work project I had very deliberately decided not to think about raised its hand from the back of the room and started jabbering away about deadlines and due dates and what I was forgetting to include.
I was watching one of my favorite movies. I was quite comfortable and very busy ushering in Fall, thank you very much. I was there. I just wasn’t in it.
Then I Got Up
After a while, getting up stopped feeling like a decision.
It’s not like I was choosing chores over rest. It’s just that there was no point in trying to rest with all these “to do’s” left on my list.
So, I said I’ll just knock out these few things and then I’ll actually be able to relax. Which is a absolutely reasonable thought and a complete and total lie that I have believed approximately nine thousand times in my life.
So I got up to vacuum the crumbs. But, once the vacuum was out, well…these crumbs are not the only crumbs. The whole floor needs it, really. That’s just efficiency.
Then since I was up, I went to move the laundry. There was already a load in the dryer, which meant there was folding to be done. Then, I had to put it all away, which meant I was in three different rooms with an armload of towels.
And then it was somehow already lunch time and my child expected to be fed. Rude.
The movie kept on going in the background and I guess I was kind of watching it. But, I have seen Practical Magic enough times to know that by the time I gave it my full attention again…I had missed the midnight margaritas.
Not. Cool.
This is how I’ve always been wired. At least as long as I can remember. I simply can’t ever relax until everything is done. But, nothing is ever done.
The Last Time Anything Was Finished
I mean, the last job I had where I got to be done was waiting tables in high school.
Waiting tables was great. You worked your shift. You wiped down your section, you rolled your silverware, you counted your tips, and then you left.
It’s not like you could keep taking people’s orders from your car – at least not in those days. It was physically impossible to serve a table from your Honda. So, the job ended the second the building was behind you.
But, as an adult, it doesn’t really work that way anymore.
Work doesn’t end, it just pauses. House cleaning is never done – at least not past that one brief and shining moment before the people who live there actually use the house.
Parenting is definitely never off the clock. Even while my son sleeps, I’m knocking out tasks and planning things on his behalf.
There is no universe in which a grown adult thinks “I’m all caught up,” without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So the story we tell ourselves, the one that sounds so reasonable, is I’ll rest when everything is done.
But, that’s not a strategy. That’s a self imposed hostage situation. Because, the truth is, we’re doing this to ourselves.
You Can’t Un-see It
When space opens up on the calendar, it feels wonderful. Truly. There’s this little lift in your chest. An afternoon that’s free. A morning meeting that gets cancelled and gives you a chance to go get a real coffee. That cancelled conference call that gives you an hour back of your life.
And then your brain, which has spent twenty or thirty years training for this moment, goes into hyperdrive. Instead of slowly driving to your favorite coffee shop and enjoying a morning treat, you’re chained to your desk wondering how it became 11 o’clock.
Because you can’t turn off the noticing. You cannot un-know what you know. You can’t turn off the never ending mantra in your head that says “If I don’t stay ahead of it, it will cost me more in the end.”
So, you believe that you must use this free time to catch up. That you have to catch up before you can rest.
So, you keep pushing through your never ending to do list. You keep filling every free spot on your calendar or in your routine or in your mind – all under the misapprehension that you’ll eventually get to enjoy the fruits of all your labor.
There’s a scene in the 1995 remake of the classic movie, Sabrina. The title character marvels at the private jet she’s on with its owner, the gruff and hardworking, Linus Larrabee.
Linus is taking Sabrina from Manhattan to Martha’s Vineyard for the day. They’d saved time by taking a helicopter to the airfield before boarding the corporate jet. As Sabrina stares out the window, genuinely delighted by how beautiful everything looks from the air, Linus has his head buried in a stack of papers from work.
She asks whether he ever looks out the window. He says he doesn’t have the time.
“What happened to all that time we saved by taking the helicopter?”, she asks.
“I’m saving it up.”, he says.
Matter of factly, she replies. “No, you’re not.”
We Monarchs, the default adults of our lives, are like Linus Larrabee trying to store up all our efficiencies for a someday that will never come.
We think if we can just clear the decks of everything that might cause a problem down the line, we’ll prevent all the things that might trip us up. We say things like…
I’ll pack the kid’s backpacks on Sunday night to make it easier to get out the door on Monday morning.
I’ll just knock out the presentation tonight so I can free myself up on Friday afternoon.
I’ll ask my partner to help me get started on that home project now so it doesn’t eat up our whole weekend.
You may even have hired help, have family nearby, or a wildly supportive group of friends to help you manage everything on your plate. But, I’m willing to bet that even when they helicopter in and knock things off your list, you just fill it right back up with more, don’t you?
That’s because you’re not just trying to be efficient and wise. You’re trying to avert disaster.
Your Life Is Happening Now
Somewhere in the rear view mirror, you learned that you were in it alone. And, the only thing you had going in your favor was the ability to stay twelve moves ahead.
To anticipate the challenges, mitigate the risk, and keep all the plates spinning that could someday come crashing down around you. And, it worked. It worked so well that you’re the one everybody else depends on.
But, now, the disaster you’re preventing is hypothetical. The Saturday you’re spending to prevent it is not.
You are trading a real, live, once in a lifetime afternoon for insurance against a bad thing that may never come. A bad thing, that when it genuinely does come, will probably not be the thing you prepared for anyway.
Like when you pack the backpacks on Sunday night and your kid tells you Monday morning that they still have homework that needs to be done so you end up unpacking the stupid thing all over again.
Or, when you finish that work project early so you can have a relaxed Friday afternoon, until someone sees your calendar is free and books another meeting in its place.
Because no matter how efficient and organized you are, or how much disaster you avert, you cannot prepare your way out of being human.
You just end up spending your one precious life preparing for someday and forget to actually live.
I don’t have unlimited Saturday afternoons to spend on the things I love. And I spent one of them last week vacuuming a floor that got dirty again before dinner.
I swapped something that could have filled me up, for an activity that made me feel less annoyed. That’s not a trade I’m willing to make for the rest of my “one wild and precious life”.
I want to live like Sabrina was on that fancy jet – noticing the beauty and wonder all around me – and actually enjoying this life I worked so hard to create.
So, What Actually Helps
Anytime you want to replace a habit, you’ve got to give yourself something else to do instead. Here are a few ideas that might actually help.
Question the to do list. Former late night host, Craig Ferguson, has a comedy bit about the three things you should ask before you speak.
- Does this need to be said?
- Does this need to be said by me?
- Does this need to be said by me now?
He says it took him three marriages to learn that – you just learned it for free. So, you’re welcome.
Try applying this principle to the tasks that constantly pop up in your head.
Does this actually need to be done? Does it need to be done now? Does it need to be done now, by me?
The crumbs on my kitchen floor, fail this test nearly every time. Making lunch for my nine year old never does. This strategy isn’t about doing less. It’s about being able to tell the difference between the things that really need to get done and the compulsion to fix everything you can see.
Write the plan instead of doing the task. This one is my favorites because it feels kind of like cheating. Researchers have found that the intrusive thoughts we get from unfinished tasks can be reliably quieted by making a specific plan for when and how you’ll do them.
Your brain isn’t demanding you do the laundry. It’s demanding proof that the laundry won’t be forgotten. So give it the proof. Sunday, after church, before dinner. Write it down. Then back under the cozy blanket you go.
Bring people. I’m not good at giving myself permission to stop. But, when I’m with my friends, it’s a whole lot easier.
Making plans with people gets me out of my house, away from the visible evidence of risk, and into a conversation that requires me to be present. It’s one of my favorite workarounds because isolation and numbing actually make this noticing everything that needs to be done tendency worse.
Alone in your room, surrounded by responsibilities it’s really hard to justify taking a rest. Having the girls over for movie night feels different. You can’t exactly get up and fold the laundry when the girls are there. So, you’re forced to enjoy the down time without distraction.
Aim It Somewhere Useful
My most effective strategy for shutting the noticing off, has been to aim my superpower at something I actually enjoy.
Once a month, I have a friend over for breakfast.
Breakfast is something that lands squarely on my “to do” list part of the day. It’s all rush and shoes and packing lunches and checking emails while trying to shove some eggs in my face. But, if I block off a little morning time on the calendar after kiddo is out the door to school, I can create something I’ll genuinely enjoy.
I know it’s coming for at least a week. Which means I get to clean my house, slowly, and for something that feels actually important.
I’m not folding laundry because it’s screaming at me. But, because someone I love is coming over and I want to use the fancy napkins when I get the table set just right.
I go to the grocery store, not because we’re out of milk, but because I want to make something delicious that will allow my friend feel cared for and seen.
I’ll make a real pot of tea instead of throwing a tea bag into a to-go cup. I’ll use real china, crystal napkin holders, & the glasses that almost never see daylight because of the walking tornado of living with a child.
It’s actually more work to do all of this. Like, a lot more work. But, it doesn’t feel that way.
There’s research out of Rutgers and Ohio State that explains why. They found that people who believe leisure is wasteful, enjoy their downtime less and report more anxiety and stress. But, when the leisure also served some larger purpose, their enjoyment of it survived and came with all the stress reduction benefits you can get.
By creating an experience for my friends, I’m making this little logical loophole work in my favor. I’ve got the same energy, same eye for detail, same brain that plans three steps ahead. But I’ve aimed it at making something I get to be inside of.
I create an opportunity to move out of risk mitigation and into creation.
What Could You Begin?
You’re never going to stop noticing what needs to be done. That part of you developed for a reason and it’s not a bug in your personality that needs to be fixed. It’s how you’re wired. You don’t have to fight it.
But, if it belongs to you – you should get to decide what it’s for.
You can choose to tap into it to build a life you get to inhabit. To create beauty. To ease into your weekend. You deserve to have a slow morning with people who make you laugh or spend your weekend watching your favorite Fall movie when it’s 102 degrees.
Anything that actually fills you up, is a much better use of your skills than a Saturday morning spent vacuuming a floor that will be dirty again by Saturday night.
The dishes will wait. They’re very good at it. But, you don’t have to. What could you begin instead?
Monarch is coaching and community for the people who keep everyone else afloat. If you’ve built the systems, done the work, and still can’t sit still, that’s not a discipline problem. Let’s talk about it. Book a free thirty minute call and tell me what your version of noticing looks like.
