Nothing is enough.

A handful of insights, gathered from various sources, about productivity, rest, and self-worth.

1. Permission to start at zero.

I’ve been listening to a series of short talks called “Time Management for Mortals”, delivered by Oliver Burkeman, who wrote a book on the same topic, on the Waking Up app. In one of the episodes, he asks: Do you start each day with the implicit assumption that you are in a “productivity deficit”? In other words, like most people you have a list of things that need to be done, but you feel that you have to do a certain number of them just to get to a minimum level of acceptableness.

This metaphor prompted another image in my mind: that of running towards a finish line that never stops moving, while everything behind me is crumbling into the abyss. Everything we have already achieved is so easily instantly forgotten.

Burkeman’s invitation was this: What if you instead started each day – perhaps even each moment – on the assumption that you’re at zero instead of in the negative?

In other words, as he explained, you do want to do the things on your to-do list – they are worthwhile activities – but if you don’t do them, it’s not like you are at some sort of a loss. Because, if you like, you still have everything done that you did yesterday, or before now, no matter how much or how little that was (valuable side bar: try keeping a “Done List”). And conversely, everything you do end up doing from now is a credit, a bonus, rather than “catching up”.

Didn’t they once try to teach us in Maths that there’s actually no such thing as a negative number?

2. Modelling rest.

I was recently working on a blog piece for a client about a model called the Seven Types of Rest. The premise it is based on is that we tend to assume that if we’re getting enough sleep, we should be well rested. The model counters this by showing that we replenish our energy in many different ways, not just by having physical downtime. The other types of rest are mental, emotional, social, sensory, spiritual and creative. Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, who created the concept, discusses it in this 2019 TED Talk.

When reflecting on this critically in the context of corporate productivity culture, it struck me as rather appropriate that somebody had to create a framework to spell out what the “life” part of work-life balance should actually look like. Or, as I mused cynically to myself, we finally have some ammunition against a system that tries to make us believe that as long as we’re getting enough sleep, they’re not abusing us.

When I shared some of these thoughts with my sister over coffee, she took it a step further: she pointed out that this model still works under the implicit assumption that we’re only resting (better, more productively!) in order to work harder. There is a broader paradigm to be wary of, namely: Am I still assuming that my “life” is in service of my output – or even my sense of worth?

3. Burn down to what?

I listened to an interview with a woman who suffered from burnout and wrote a book about it. One sit-up-and-take-note point she made was that it can take one to two years to recover, unless it’s a mild case. We should bear this in mind when, I suspect, the term has become something we throw around more and more casually. “Burned out” is like the new “busy”.

Also useful was her emphasising the importance of knowing yourself, specifically in order to protect yourself from going into overdrive. Type A personalities, for example, are known to be more susceptible to burnout. My own thoughts were that we should also be talking about the impact of cynicism and hostility on our general wellbeing. These might be thought of as personality traits, but they can also be contextual – that is, environmental, cultural and temporary. Just listening to the language she was using made me reflect on the ways in which we have internalised the societal drive for productivity, and the judgment of self and others that results:

“How did I wreck my health?”

“Burnout doesn’t happen to couch potatoes.”

“We all have our Achilles heels.” (i.e. flaws or weaknesses in our bodies or temperaments.)

And finally: “You can’t serve from an empty cup”. This now well-used saying suddenly struck me as inherently problematic. It’s like the only reason you would take care of yourself is to serve. Yes, life is about meaning, and meaning is largely about connection and service. But what are we implying about what it means to be an “empty cup”? Is there even such a thing?

It seemed to me like deficit mentality once again: We do too much because we believe we are too little, by default. I think beyond questioning the notion of being some sort of vessel in the first place, perhaps we should be asking what is so wrong with emptiness?   

4. Self-compassion works because you don’t even have to like yourself.

I heard this (possibly paraphrased) in a podcast interview with KC Davis, an author and therapist who was speaking on the topic of household chores. She acknowledges the amount of conflict that housework can cause in our close relationships, but more importantly the intrapersonal struggles that underlie this one aspect of life that we tend to disregard. In short, we internalise certain moralistic narratives about tidiness from our culture (e.g. what does “Cleanliness is next to godliness” say about messy people?) and from our family environment, and then we make implicit assumptions about what they mean about our self-worth. One of her takeaways was to see tidying as something you do to achieve a functional, not perfect, environment – and more importantly, to recognise that you are worthy of a system that supports you.

And then the point about self-compassion. I think the main realisation was that we don’t have to think that we’re perfect before we can believe ourselves worthy of an environment that serves us. Seeing ourselves habitually hustle for worthiness or validation, and recognising the strain and suffering this causes, should be cause for self-kindness – much as we would be kind to a close friend or family member who never believed they were good enough.  

For me, it is even more fundamental: it’s about feeling that our lives are justified.

Maybe it’s about being able to see the wholeness of our zero, as it were.

Maybe it comes down to this:

What if you believed that if you did nothing else, you still had the right to exist?

One time I was dancing and this question came to me:

What are you FOR?

And the answer that came back was:

I am for now.