This shouldn’t surprise anyone, certainly not me, but life is often very busy. Now, while everyone knows this, the reason I’m pointing it out is not because my life has been very busy (which it has), it’s that the days when my life is not very busy, it feels like taking a deep breath after having been under water for far too long. The days I haven’t been busy make me want to melt into the couch and turn my brain to something that has no relevance to the here and now. My obvious go-to is TV, I love catching up on my shows, and getting sucked into new ones, such as Fullmetal Alchemist, which I just finished this weekend. My deep-breath days are especially bad for doing things I know I should do, like cleaning the apartment, blogging, calling friends and family, etc. These are all things I want to do, things that I know would make me happy, but when that deep breath fills my lungs and floods my brain with fresh oxygen all I can think is “Time for ME!”. Don’t get me wrong, I still knit during this time, but knitting from a pattern, watching TV, reading blogs, these are passive things. Every time I try out this method of relaxation it feels good at the start, but soon enough that deep breath goes stale and I feel like there’s no oxygen left in the air.
I need to get better at this. Because as good as a day of nothing feels, the guilt that pours in after you realize you’ve done nothing with your time is excruciating, and entirely unnecessary. Maybe writing this all down won’t make a difference, but I hope it does. I want to get better at generating to-do lists and actually crossing things off. I won’t go cold turkey on TV, knitting, the internet, or anything else that distracts me, but I will get better at limiting my use of these things as a crutch. There are things that I want to do with my life and they won’t get done unless I do them.
Does anyone else struggle with this? Do you have tips to keep focused and motivated? Let me know in the comments and maybe we can get through this together.
I’ve struggled with this for years. I’m new to blogging and I just wrote an entry on what I think is a related subject: fear. For me, it helped to set small, specific goals such as one hour of *productive task* on a particular day, and once completed, I could go off and do whatever time wasting thing I wanted.
I would also sometimes combine whatever task I was reluctant to do with something I really liked, like calling my parents while drinking a glass of that new wine I wanted to try, or working on my writing projects with a TV show playing in the background. Almost like tricking myself into working.
Great post about fear. That definitely plays a part in my unwillingness to do productive tasks. And often I will start to feel the begins of motivation and confidence, then it all comes crashing in, because of fear.
Multitasking is smart, I tend to multitask two unproductive things, but certainly I could talk on the phone and knit, speakerphones are great!
So glad you wrote this! I’m constantly struggling with this. I know exactly where you’re coming from. It’s so tough, especially when things get busy, to keep moving at the end of a long day/week. I’ve decided on two things: First, I plan to make efforts to do the things on my lists. Which means sometimes I have to put down my knitting. I’m ok with that. It’s as simple as telling myself that it’s time to get up. Sometimes it works!
Second, when I do take “me” time, I’m not going to feel guilty about it. I spent all of Saturday on the couch watching TV and it felt great and I was relaxed enough to get things done later in the weekend. I’d normally feel the need to apologize for “being lazy” all day but once I have some balance down, the guilt is unnecessary.
(Another thing that I find helps is tweeting when I get things done. It’s like I’m giving myself a gold star. I’m sure it’s annoying for my followers but sometimes they give me a virtual pat on the back and it makes me feel awesome!)
Good luck! Motivation is really tough!
As a follower of yours on twitter, it’s definitely not annoying, possibly even motivating. I agree that I need to not let myself get too bogged down in the guilt, it can be a vicious cycle. Which means I need to stop berating myself when I don’t do things, like posting it on twitter…
I started using a to-do list app called WorkFlowy, and I’m still working on listing everything, but I’m hoping it will help.