Today is a slow day. I am feeling uninspired and un-motived. My energy levels are low. In my years as a CEO I had plenty of days like that, but very rarely gave myself permission to be unproductive. CEOs, and people in positions of power in general, like to think of themselves as too busy to pause, as indispensable. Being busy is a badge of honour for others to take note of. And so, as a young leader, finding my own path, I followed that example, pushing through days like this and becoming very, very good at coping and at looking capable no matter what the day, week or year brought.
It’s a great skill to have, and one that I rely on often, but no longer all the time. Because if there’s anything I’ve learnt since I took on that first senior leadership position in 2012, it’s that being too good at coping doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit the organisation as in the long term it becomes unsustainable, it doesn’t benefit those around you because they don’t learn the skills or gain the confidence to succeed without you and most importantly it doesn’t serve you.
Giving yourself permission to be unproductive, in whatever shape or form, is a skill I am actively seeking to acquire. Since starting my own business and decreasing my level of responsibility from generating enough turnover to pay salaries for 10 to having to generate only enough income to meet my own aims, I have worked very hard at giving myself permission to work less. To take days off. To step away from the screen, from emails, calls and the pressure to be successful, and to be seen to succeed.
I became a CEO at 32, and I worked so hard at being taken seriously, to establish myself as an effective leader in my field, that I never even considered working less. I lived and breathed and loved my work. My physical, mental and social health did not love the choices I was making and as the years went on, my body made me listen.
This week I am coaching a staff cohort at the University of Oxford in healthy habits for hybrid working, and one of the topics we spent most time on is how to manage feelings of guilt, of anxiety and of worry about being perceived as hard-working, and as productive, especially on days of working from home. Even when there was an explicit or general understanding that breaks were encouraged and taking exercise or stepping away was seen as desirable, the pressure to perform and meet (one’s own or others’) expectations remained strong. So the question we explored was: “What would it take to make it OK?” How can we build the habits needed to make high performing hybrid work sustainable?
I thought that the answer lies in the job I have, which is partly why I started my own venture. What I learnt since is that the kind of practices I now adopt to find balance would have been perfectly possible in my CEO role. I just couldn’t see it, and I needed to step outside of the confines of the role for that shift of perspective to happen.
Sure, there are days when things are truly urgent, and when you do have to show up, push through and get the job done. But even in these times of permanent crisis, this is not the case each and every day. More often than not, nothing at all would happen if we didn’t show up for a meeting or delayed a deadline by a day or a week or even a month. There is always more work to be done, new deadlines to meet and more demands on our time than we can meet.
I don’t want to seek the solution to this in increasing my productivity. I am productive enough. Instead I want to find reward and joy in not being productive on days like this, when my body tells me to take it easy.
Choosing to do less
At times throughout my career I have had periods, at times long ones, where being as productive as I wanted to be simply wasn’t possible. Whether due to ill health, care responsibilities or simply life happening, I’ve been through months and years of having to rethink what’s achievable. It was the hardest thing for me to change my thinking from looking forward to new challenges and delighting in being able to solve complex problems and to throw all my energy and ingenuity into the fray; to suddenly having to manage my energy very carefully. My reserves were low, and I had to learn the art of appreciating the “good enough” and of thinking “that will do” instead of following my inner perfectionist.
Being in a situation when choice is taken away is always hard. What I am writing about here isn’t really about what to do in those kinds of contexts, when ill health or circumstances or crisis strike. In my experience there is some overlap however, between trying to make a choice to do less and having to do less out of necessity, and I like to think that I would have coped better in times of having less choice if I had been better at giving myself permission to do less all together. Choosing to do less, to be less frantically busy all the time, is both a privilege and a radical choice.
Is this the time?
It feels a bit precious to be writing about rest in times like these, when so many truly urgent issues are arising. Rest is radical, as Lou Mycroft so eloquently put, and this feels especially true in the face of global political and social changes, and the funding cuts in the not for profit and education sectors I work in. And yet it feels relevant, and important, to learn how to differentiate between the demands of a busy work life and the work that really needs doing. Becoming ever more digitally productive in measurable ways is not the answer. Giving yourself permission to be unproductive feels important and I know the difference between being selfish and practising self care.
The indigo girl’s sing that “darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable” and those words feel particularly relevant at this time in history. The harder the Broligarchy works to enforce digital measures of productivity and oversight as the path to (their) success, the more we need to keep in mind that being productive ≠ profits.
I was inspired by a recent post Kin Lane published, which reflects on what happens when we see people as resources. It’s rare to have someone with that wealth of leadership experience utilise their story-telling skills to help us think through the pitfalls of digital productivity, and I am grateful indeed for Kin’s voice. Likewise, I’ve found much inspiration in the Permission Slip with which Bryan gave himself, and all of us, permission to create something, regardless of what others think. I was lucky enough to take part in one of Bryan’s zine making workshops recently, and found it (surprisingly) powerful. Although I draw and create much, Bryan’s way of guiding us into the process helped me pen a small adventure (the humble pencil “HB” in an epic struggle against the AI “Intelli-Pen”) in a different voice. A voice I rather liked.
The concept of the permission slip, a powerful tool for all sorts of contexts, I first came across in Elizabeth Gilbert’s ode to creativity in her book Big Magic, and it’s been inspiring my recent work on walking as a reflective practice, and finding your own “critical cadence“.
Strategies that work for me
This post isn’t meant to be a “how to” post, and I am wary of the toxic visions of “having it all” lives, when time away from work just turns into more work of curating the perfect family, home, body and so on. I don’t want to add to that, but if you are trying to tune in to when you need to stop and are wondering how to actually do that, so that you focus on something other than your inbox or notifications of unread messages, below I have shared some strategies that work for me as I unlearn my decade long habit of over-working.
- Tune in to your body: moving my body is a short-cut to getting out of my head. In my case what works best is walking, yoga, running.
- Focus on joy in small things: Calm is key for me, and the easiest way to slow down during the day for me is to focus on small things, and their little rituals. Making fresh coffee, arranging some flowers from the garden, making simple food from scratch. I find a lot of joy in small things, and I delight in the quotidian.
- Fun flow state: I am lucky in that I am good at concentrating and I find it easy to work in a flow state. My issue is more with loosing track of time and my physical needs because I am too focused on work. Trying to work less made me miss that feeling, that fun flow state. It took a good while, but I found an activity recently that enables me to dip into a flow state and relax completely, whilst working creatively with my hands. I build tiny book nooks and models of flower shops made of wood, paper and wire. I don’t particularly treasure the models once they are finished, but it’s a wonderful hobby.
- Do something you don’t need to track or measure: anything I can track or measure comes with inbuilt expectations of progress, and even where that’s not the case, I usually find myself imposing some of my own volition. In order to stop myself from setting expectations, I focus on activity I don’t track. Reading physical books, walking my dogs, writing letters. I have no idea how many letters I have sent in the past year for example, and that’s just fine. I write one whenever I feel like it.
- Be explicit about giving yourself permission: I find it difficult to relax whilst I feel I should be working. My solution to that problem is to write it down. I keep a record of how many hours or days I take off, whether it’s for being unwell or just not doing paid work, and I track it over time. This way, I can be very explicit with myself (and others) about when I am not doing things.