Month: December 2015

Let me get something out there right now. I could be wrong, but my guess is that if you’re reading this you’re not so much of a black and white thinker. As a helping professional you resist all or nothing language. You’ve embraced circular causality. You can accept multiple yet opposing points of view at the same time. I’ll bet that at your finest Rogerian moments you can even empathize with ax-murderers and Westboro Baptists. On top of that, you can manage the life narratives of thirty clients and remember each of their genograms. Your brain is simply wired for non-linear thought. Which is great…most of the time.
The last post introduced the idea that “balancing” tasks sounds good metaphorically, but not practically (btw, if you haven’t read that post yet, you can read it here). The reason for this is that our brains can really only do one mindful task at a time. The problem comes when we try to do many things at once or try to keep too many unfinished things in our heads. Can you relate? I spent many years “going with the flow” with no systems to help me order my life. What I mean is that if someone told me something that I needed to remember, I would just try to remember it. Appointment on Friday at 10am? Got it. Buy some eggs on the way home? Done. But then I became a social worker. My magical “flow” plan died a horrible death within weeks of receiving a child protection caseload.
Soon, feelings of overwhelm started to wash over me at work. My mind would spin from thing to thing to thing, as I unproductively (and hopelessly) tried to put out one fire after another. My world crumpled into a messy pile of unfinished stuff in short order. I began to procrastinate, distract, and dissociate from the mounting pressure of it all. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed a better strategy. That strategy is tactic number one on the list of actionable steps designed to chill us out and foster a sense of steady productivity. Here it is:
Write stuff down.
Not just some stuff. All of your stuff. Take 45 minutes and write every last thing down that’s in your head. Quantify it: the groceries you need to get, every to-do item, all of your work tasks, every random idea or goal. Everything. Just the simple act of putting absolutely everything on paper is almost guaranteed to offer you some relief, even though you haven’t actually dealt with any of it yet. Don’t believe me? Think it’s too simple? Just try it. The moment that swirl of stuff is out of your brain and onto paper, your mind can mellow. That basic act sends your deluged noodle the message: “I can let go of the burden of carrying all of this”. The result is almost always a reduced sense of overwhelm.
Now back to your snazzy non-linear cognitive abilities. They really are great…I mean it. When working with clients- talking through traumatic memories, discussing raw emotions, creative problem-solving- those mad skills of yours are pretty effective. However when it comes to the tasks of life, let’s face it: non-linear often falls pretty short. Thing to thing to thing just doesn’t work. Sometimes linear is better.
Here’s another linear concept- Step Two. After you’ve put everything down, rank them in order of importance. If your list is really long, pick out your top ten. Now choose one of those items and tackle it. Don’t choose two or three. Just choose one. Two or three is what gets us into trouble, because three equals “thing to thing to thing”. Decide when you will accomplish your ONE TASK. After and only after you complete your single list item, you may choose another. Wash, rinse, repeat. Keep it linear. Before long, you will have made a real dent in your list and hopefully your sense of well-being and personal efficacy will increase. It just feels good to chew through a tough list.
I promise you that getting your ducks in a row by putting your whole life on paper will reduce much of your stress to “water off a duck’s back” 🙂
Do you have a list-writing idea? Share it with us in the comments section below.

Metaphors can be helpful. They help us explain complex things quickly. When I say “The ball is in your court” I am able to quickly convey the fact that I am handing over my responsibility for something to you. We aren’t playing tennis- I’m just letting you know that something is no longer my problem, and therefore you should probably take action! When I say “Don’t quit your day job!” I really mean “You aren’t super awesome at that.” When we speak of work-life and home-life, we use the word “balance,” which is also a metaphor. After all, we aren’t talking about a real scale- we’re using “balance” to convey a more complex idea. But there’s only one problem.
Balance isn’t real.
I mean, it’s real if you are talking about being on a seesaw. It’s real if we are speaking about the number in your bank account. If you’re talking about your ability to shuffle from the nightclub to the taxi on Saturday night, I’ll give you that too. Yet when we think about all the demands of our lives, from client meetings, to getting the groceries, to remembering to ask our partner to take the car in for an oil change, to the eternal parade of dishes, laundry, and kid toy cleanup, the metaphor of balance falls short. But why?
Simply put, we can’t do all of that stuff at the same time. In fact, human beings can’t really “balance” more than one action or thought at once. Instead we shift from thing to thing to thing. We may even be able to make that shift quickly- like having a conversation while making dinner. I am actually pretty good at timing out the spaghetti and the meat sauce and making a salad while asking my son about his day at school. But it’s not accurate to say that I am balancing anything. I am just doing many different things lined up in a quick series.
When I really think about it, I have noticed that my “multitasking” abilities essentially allow me to do one mindless thing and one mindful thing at the same time, that’s it. For example, I can stroll down the sidewalk (mindless) while talking with a friend (mindful). I can drive (relatively mindless) while listening to a podcast. If I try to do two mindful things at the same time, like watching Netflix and talking on the phone or doing my taxes or reading a blog post, I end up doing both poorly. It just doesn’t work.
So what does this have to do with work-life balance?
When most people say, “I need to have better “work-life balance” what they’re really saying is that either stuff from work is making them feel overwhelmed or crappy at home or that stuff from home is making them feel overwhelmed or crappy at work. Maybe they’re getting hit in both directions. The problem is that when we think of this problem as a “balance” issue, we are left with only a vague sense of what’s wrong. The metaphor actually masks the truth about the nature of the problem we’re having, leaving us with exactly zero actionable steps we can take to solve the problem.
In the coming weeks, I will present five actions that when taken will lower feelings of overwhelm, while increasing both productivity and subjective well-being. The ultimate goal of this series is to help you “feel less crappy” about all the stuff you need to get done so that you can enjoy your life.
What have you found to be so overwhelming about work in the last year that it has spilled into your home life? What family or personal things have you been unable to leave at home? Leave a comment below and let’s keep talking.