Do you ever feel like you’re behind
Last week, I caught a little cold and had some other unexpected events, and I did not stick to my planned schedule.
As a former procrastinator, I have a lot of practice in getting things done just in time, but figuring my schedule out this week does not feel at all like the hectic stress and anxiety I used to feel in my procrastination heyday.
In fact, I feel pretty calm about figuring out my schedule this week and adding things that didn't get done last week. I am not at all worried that I might not get everything done. I am fairly certain that I will be able to and I know that if I can't, that will be ok, too.
This is no accident. I've been coached A LOT on getting things done. I've been coached A LOT on scheduling. I've had many, many meltdowns about all of it. And, I've come to appreciate my schedule as a tool that helps me (not as something that terrorizes me or controls my time).
But like I said, I used to experience a lot of feelings about my to do items. Like really big feelings. Stress. Anxiety. Worry. Oh, and also anger.
I actually used to feel a lot of anger about being sick, as well, but that's a subject for another newsletter.
So, let's talk about the most common schedule thought errors and how to deal with them.
Here are three that I see a lot:
I am behind.
I have too much to do // not enough time.
I'm always late.
Let's take them one by one.
First: I am behind. This might seem true enough. You might think that I'd be thinking it right now, since I didn't get everything done last week. But I am not, and here is why.
When I think I am behind, I feel stressed out. When I feel stressed out, I do not do my best work. And sometimes, I also get up and wander around, looking for a coffee or someone to talk to, because I do not want to feel the stressed out feeling.
Many people think that they work better under stress, but when you look at what you actually do when you feel stressed, it's usually not true. Usually, we work worse under stress, distracting ourselves with numbing or avoiding behavior until a deadline is looming, and then we hurry up and finish all the work, because we are more afraid of the deadline than we are of the stressed out feeling.
To make matters worse, the relief of getting all the work done at the last minute can also create a reward circuit in your brain, encouraging your brain to use this pattern again.
Here's the thing, though. It's not actually true that I am behind. Here's what is true: I had tasks on my calendar last week and I did not do them. But instead of looking at this situation and saying it means that I am behind, I look at the situation and say, I can figure out how to get the important stuff done.
Why? Because when I choose that way of seeing things, I feel confident. And when I feel confident, I can easily figure out how to reconfigure my calendar to get this work done. I can easily decide what I can reschedule, what I can tighten the schedule on, what I can simply skip doing for this week.
This is what I mean when I say that our thoughts create our reality. If I say that I'm behind, I'll feel stressed, avoid my work or do a worse job at it, and get further behind. If I say that I can figure it out, I feel confident, and then I do in fact figure it out. It's not magic. It's very straight forward, actually. We behave according to the story we tell.
Let's look at the second thought error: I have too much to do // not enough time. Try thinking that right now - how does it feel? Yep, it feels TERRIBLE. No matter how much you have to do, if you say it's too much, that's how it feels.
And that's the thing about thoughts and your brain. It may seem to us like our thoughts are merely observing reality, but that's not what's happening. Our brains are assessing reality, and it's our assessment, not reality itself, that creates our experience.
When we think the thought,I have too much to doorI don't have enough time, that's what we create for ourselves. Again, this is not magic. This is because we feel a certain way when we think these thoughts, and then we do certain actions when we feel those feelings.
Now, it's possible that you feel fine when you thinkI have too much to do, but most people do not. Most people feel stressed and anxious, and like the thought I'm behind, they then either work frantically or they distract themselves from their work because they don't like the feeling they're having.
So, counterintuitively, if you have many tasks to complete, it's more helpful to think about them from the point of view of what you CAN get done than it is to think about them as too many or not enough time. This is why that idea of focusing on the why is helpful. That's just you, changing your thought from too much // too hard and instead focusing on the powerful reasons you have for doing the thing in the first place.
Ok, now let's also discuss tardiness. First of all, it's very unlikely that you are, in fact, ALWAYS late. It's more likely that you're late sometimes and your brain is hyperfocusing on the times you are late and insisting that they mean something bad about you.
Anytime your brain says always or never, it's a good time to stop and ask yourself if that's actually true or if it just FEELS true in this moment. The brain loves patterns, and sometimes, when it sees a pattern, it will apply always/never to the pattern, even though in reality, it's more like sometimes this thing and sometimes not.
The brain creates your experience of reality, so if it says that something is always one way, that will be your experience, but if you stop and look for evidence to the contrary, you can often find it. That's why it's important to stop and think about things rather than just listen to whatever your brain is saying.
This is not the brain misbehaving. This is what brains do. Because they did not evolve to be purely rational. They evolved to keep our species alive, in a very different time from the one we're currently living in.
That's why you've got to get wise to your brain and use it on purpose. Otherwise, it will simply use its built in biases and all the social conditioning it's learned up to this point. The brain is incredibly powerful, but it needs YOU to direct it if you want to live your life in a different way than you have up to this point.
Back to scheduling. These three thought errors are common with calendaring and getting things done, but you might find that you have different ones. Whatever your brain says about this, you can use it as a jumping off point.
The key is to notice what your brain is saying and get curious about it. How do you feel when you believe that thought? And then how do you act? Is this how you WANT to act? If it's not, then it's time to look for a new way of looking at things.
And one of the easiest ways to get started with that is to do what I talked about above and look for data to the contrary of whatever your brain is saying or look for more nuance and subtlety than your brain is giving you.
Oh, and one more thing. Whatever your brain is saying, even if it feels true, ask yourself, do I want this to be true? If you don't, that's a key time to really examine your brain's thoughts. Because, as we discussed, what you think impacts what you create, so you may as well use that power to create something you want.