Observations

Big news today, friends! Something juicy from Make Lemonade has finally launched. Business 101 is their entrepreneur starter kit featuring four courses jam-packed with content, and I am the teacher of one of them!

This reflection could be about a lot of things, but for today it’ll be about the surreality of being a part of a project like this. It’ll be about how proud I am that I was asked to be one of the teachers. It’ll be about how EXCITED I am to announce this to the world in every way I know how. It’ll be about how cool it is to watch yourself explain something on a professionally-made video. It’ll be about how I’m pinching myself, how I feel so lucky, how I can’t wait to see what people take away from all of the courses, how this feels like a big moment for me.

I’ve been on a “staycation” for the past several days, which was part relaxation and part “getting my shit together after a month of chaos”. Which means that I haven’t checked my email since Friday morning, which means that waking up to this launch (even though I’ve known it was coming, even though I’ve had it in my calendar for months) still feels completely wild. The Make Lemonade team have worked so hard to make this project a reality and it’s pretty special to behold.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go shout about this from the rooftops.

PS. Go check out Business 101 y’all!

Yesterday I heard the siren song of switching to a new project management app, yet again. I know, I know, this is possibly the most nerdy sentence ever known to humankind but bear with me, because I think this is a universal concept.

There I was, minding my own business, when a client mentioned they’d settled on using ClickUp to manage all their projects. Now, keep in mind that this was an app suggestion I’d given to her out of several different options. Meaning, I was quite familiar with it already. It’s one of the many systems I’d explored before settling on Asana and telling myself that decision was permanent(ish)(at least for the next year). (Actually, “explored” makes the whole process sound rather prim and professional. Maybe “maniacally switched back and forth between” would be more accurately put.) But did that stop me from logging back in to ClickUp and playing around with it for an hour? Did that stop me from watching a bunch of YouTube video reviews of the best project management systems? Sadly, it did not.

You see, shiny new systems are my siren song. There are constantly new ones being released, and they’re gorgeous and highly functional and make work simpler to organize. I even have a whole list of them in The Appothecary! I love ‘exploring’ new tools, and it’s partly my job to be familiar with them, and yet…

And yet, it’s a form of procrastination to follow my siren songs. I can get so swept up in the excitement of something new that I waste time I could be using to move projects ahead or plan for the future. I can spend a lot of time moving all my notes and ideas from one system to another, and then back again, and that’s not including all the time I spend researching these different systems, watching videos about them, and so on.

The point is, it’s not productive. Fussing around with systems is a way of avoiding the real work. Or, as Austin Kleon says: “The tools matter and the tools don’t matter.” Yes, you’ll naturally outgrow some tools as you need bigger and better things. But don’t get lost in the siren song that tells you that having the right tools is the only way to get it right or get it started. That’s a lie, one that is probably preventing you from doing your most important work.

Tie yourself to the damn mast. Block your damn ears. Tell yourself, “IT’S ASANA OR NOTHING FOR THE NEXT YEAR, STEPHANIE,” and stick to it. Because yes, maybe there is a better system out there, or a better project, or a better idea, or better inspiration. Isn’t there always? But it’s our job as creators to choose the best option we have and move on. Make the thing anyways. Don’t wait til it’s perfect. Figure out the bare minimum you need to do your work, and then do it. And for all that is holy, ignore that siren song and get back to work. 

Yesterday I watched the above video from The School of Life (founded by one of my faves, Alain de Botton) about simplifying & quieting your life. The narrator gives us the lovely example of a baby getting overstimulated after a fun but overwhelming party, and at a certain point needing to go sleep it off or be in a quiet space alone.

And yet, he continues, as adults we are generally not as good at offering this kind of downtime to ourselves, at least not when it comes to recognizing our limits and giving ourselves dedicated time to process the things we experience. We might crash out in front of the TV, but that’s not the same as letting ourselves sit around and do nothing but sift through the hours we’ve just lived, mining them for lessons and memories.

He goes on to say that we probably need 10 minutes of processing time for every hour of lived experience, but I’m going to go on record and say that’s a conservative figure for me personally. I need a lot of time alone to noodle on things in order to feel rested and grounded. 

And yet, I’m not always great at just letting myself “do nothing”. I always feel like I should be ticking things off or running errands or getting things done. I think this is partially a side-effect of working for myself without the bolstering of a partner’s second income, and partially a side-effect of my personality.

It’s hard to relax when there’s always more to do, but watching this video reminded me that I don’t exactly have a choice. If I don’t want to go into meltdown mode or start getting burned out, prioritizing rest and recovery is not optional, it’s essential. If that means treating myself like an overstimulated baby (pretty accurate, to be honest), so be it. I will feel and perform better afterwards.

How do you rest? Where do you make space for processing time?

Much to my chagrin, I’m realizing that self-care is practiced moment by moment. Self-care is not a checklist, or a strategy, or a plan to follow. Yes, you can make checklists and come up with strategies and follow the plan, but they will not always work. There will be times when the strategies you’ve so lovingly devised and pointless in the face of today’s very particular set of challenges. And when that happens, it becomes very clear that the answer is not so ‘simple’ as following a prescribed set of behaviours, even if you’re the one who prescribed them.

Instead, it becomes moment by moment. Instead, we take action, pause, integrate, reassess. We ask ourselves “how do I feel” and “how about now?” and “was that helpful?” over and over again. We figure out what we need in each moment, and try our best to give that to ourselves. We don’t think about all the moments to come, just the one we’re in. We take it bird by bird. We lead with our gut.

This ‘strategy’ of checking in constantly works every time. My intuition never leads me astray, even when it’s hard to hear it or when I’m feeling lost and confused about my next moment’s steps. Eventually my gut allows me to pivot and change course if I make the “wrong” decision in any moment. It leads me back to what feels good in this moment, and that one, and the next.

The only problem with this way of practicing self-care is that it requires us to suspend our self-judgment. It requires us to take our thinking minds offline, to shut up our inner critics, and to argue with our own sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘productive’ or ‘lazy’. Or is this just me?

Yesterday I declared it a personal admin day, but I couldn’t focus on anything. I was trying to ‘be productive’, but I was exhausted, and more than that, emotionally depleted. I needed to rest. I didn’t know how to rest. Maybe if I just went grocery shopping…?

Once I got out of my own way and cut out my self-judgemental bullshit about what I really needed, I had a very restful day journalling, reflecting, sitting in the sun, and watching a few too many episodes of Scandal. It wasn’t a ‘productive’ day in the typical sense, but it was the self-care that I needed. And today I woke up earlier, feeling more energetic, and with the bandwidth to handle the day to come. What do you know?