Creative Coaching for Musicians

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S3 E42: Compassionate Productivity Tips to Help You Cope With Being Busier

Rebecca Hass

It’s often challenging to practice compassionate productivity as you’re trying to prioritize your creative practice and other important things in your life, but it can be even harder when you’re transitioning into a busier schedule or lifestyle. Many of us are doing that now in mid-2021, and finding ourselves with the overwhelming schedule equivalent of loaded-up plates at a buffet, but it can happen anytime! Here are 8 of my favorite compassionate productivity tips for transitioning as gracefully as possible, and replenishing your energy with intentionality and self-kindness.

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If you want to integrate managing your time and energy, so you have enough to accomplish the projects that are most important to you - that’s what my PDF workbook Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity helps you do!

It’s full of amazing tools for creating a humane to do list and schedule that you can actually complete, no matter your level of energy and overwhelm, along with ways to self-compassionately adapt when things don’t work out as planned.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 42 of Being A Whole Person. Before I get into it, I have a couple announcements. 

And even before that, I want to invite you to squeeze your shoulders and do some circles, put them up to your ears, and then put them down again. I know my shoulders are very crunchy lately, there's a lot going on. We can all benefit from taking a second to do that, and if you want to keep doing that while you listen, or stretch, or something, I'm not going to stop you! 

So, announcements today. Number one, free coworking has been scheduled for the rest of the summer. I'm doing one of these each month. And the dates are July 27 at 10am. And August 25 at 3:30pm. The link is in the show notes, those things are open to save your spot right now. In September, there's going to be even more coworking offered as a cool membership that you can sign up for that will help you make time for your creativity and focus, and get together with like minded people to practice compassionate productivity and all of this. More about that very soon, but I just want to put those dates out there in case you want to get them on your calendar right now. 

And, of course, my usual plug to rate and review the show - as a little independent podcaster, it matters so much when people give ratings and reviews on iTunes. That's how we get seen more and more. I want this podcast to grow. I want more people to get to hear about creativity and wellness, and be helped by it. So you writing that helps everybody, win-win-win, right? If you do that, you have my deep gratitude, thank you so much. 

So today I'm going to talk about compassionate productivity, specifically when you are adjusting to your schedule being busier, which is a very on-topic thing for us right now in July 2021, but I think is also a great evergreen topic, if you happen to be listening to this in the future. Right now, we collectively are working on coming out of pandemic mode. Yes, I know the pandemic is absolutely still going on and it's not over, but the shifts that we've made with things reopening are quite profound right now. A lot of us are trying to navigate what to add back into our lives now that we can see more people safely, now that we can do in person activities, and perhaps creative things and performing, more easily. 

It might feel like being at a buffet with your eyes bigger than your stomach, and you just want to fill all the plates because you're super excited, and it all looks so good, and suddenly, you're super overwhelmed, because not only have you overpacked your schedule, but it's overwhelming to go from very little to a lot. And transitions are hard. 

For me, that context right now is that I'm in the midst of four weeks of in person accompanying work for the first time in over a year, for the Bay Area Waldorf teacher training intensive. I've been commuting 20 miles to work every day, and I don't remember the last time that I worked out of the house for five days in a row regularly. So that was kind of a shock. By week three, it's feeling a bit better, but it just really highlighted to me that we need to take extra care and have extra intention when we are making this transition. 

So how do we practice compassionate productivity within the busyness? That's what I'm going to talk about today - lots of practical tips. But first, if you're just starting to listen to this podcast and you're not familiar with my work, maybe you haven't heard this term compassionate productivity that I keep using. 

I explained more of what it is in Season 3, Episode 7, which is called Compassionate Productivity in Your Real Life. And I have a bunch of reframes for flipping the script on all those toxic productivity messages that we hear all the time in Season 3, Episode 8, and Episode 9. But basically, compassionate productivity is not being productive just for the sake of being productive, but having it serve a purpose and integrate into your life in a way that lets you feel more balanced (which I know is a loaded word), but feel more balanced and actually like your life and how it's going. Sounds pretty good, right? We don't need to work ourselves into the ground. So that's just a little bit about it, but if you want to go deeper, check out those episodes that I just mentioned. 

So, number 1: Try to set up your life to have fewer expectations for at least the first week of your transitional time. 

Maybe you're going back to work on an ongoing basis, maybe it's temporary. Either way, it'll be so much harder if you are hating yourself for trying to cram in all the things, and then failing because you didn't plan for it, or you're not used to it, or you're just too tired to do what is probably an unrealistic amount of things. And, you know, you're extra exhausted because you're both doing more things, and you're getting used to doing more things. So, whatever you can do to delete unnecessary things. Maybe that means you buy more food, or you buy more pre-prepared food to make your life easier. Maybe that means you are doing a shorter workout, because that's what you need to do. Maybe it's just there's some things on your schedule that aren't that necessary, and you can take them out at least for a week or two. 

You can also take intentional breaks from things that are regular habits. Lately, I have been trying to play more piano. But since I'm playing so much piano at work, I'm really not holding myself to any sort of standards of practice at home, besides things that I have to practice, or when it feels really fun and nourishing and awesome to do so. But I'm not making that an extra reason to get down on myself. 

I'm also not trying to start anything new, during an already busy time. I have been wanting to start doing more workouts with weights, and I keep thinking I need to start that. I keep putting it on my to do list and it keeps not happening, and maybe that's fine. Maybe once I have more mental space, and I'm not getting up so early and trying to cram everything in, that will be easier, and I will hold myself to it. So trying to start new things might just be a losing battle. 

Number 2: Be ultra focused about what you are going to get done on your creative work, or your business, or whatever it is that you are trying to fit into your work day, outside of whatever also is going on. 

For me, I know I'm the best in the morning. I've been getting up earlier, like 6:30 instead of 7:30 or 8am, because I know I'm pretty wiped out by the time I get home in the afternoon, and I am more likely to just rationalize and say, “I don't really need to do this, it's not that important,” because I'm tired. In the morning, I know I have a better frame of mind, and I'm going to support myself in actually following through with things better. So I know that about myself, you maybe know that about yourself, too. 

If you don't, ask yourself. Try different things, different times, see what works, make it kind of a scientific process. Again, you don't need to go deeply into this, if you're feeling too busy and that feels like too much to do. It's just something that you can play with. 

Limitations often really help us focus. Have you ever had the entire day free and said, “I just need to finish this one thing”? Then it takes you the whole day because you gave it the whole day, and you know, it's allowed to expand, so it does? And if you only had an hour to do that thing, and you didn't let yourself get distracted, because you knew you only had that hour, it probably would only take an hour. Of course, that varies by what you're doing and how you're feeling on that day and things like that, but limitations can really help. So maybe the fact that you have more limitations is actually a good thing rather than a hindrance. 

Number 3: How busy do you want to be? Deciding how busy you want to be and how busy you want to feel is important. 

I know you might not have control over every single part of your life and just how busy you are in every part of your life. But if it's important to show up for your creative practice everyday for example, it might be worth the extra tiredness to know that you get that in, say, first thing in the morning or staying up a little later at night. 

It also might not be worth it, and that's fine, too, but you get to decide, you get to set that intention. Like I mentioned earlier, maybe you decide to take a break from holding yourself to that creative practice for a few weeks, and that's totally fine. As long as you have the intention to restart again, and you have a way to make that happen, that's great. 

Number 4 is also an intentional thing: Choosing acceptance versus resistance. 

Say you are getting up early to write, or to do art, and you kind of wish that your schedule didn’t feel so crammed, and you kind of wish that you got to sleep in, and you're grumbling your way through it every day. You get to decide whether you focus on the resistance, or whether you focus on the positives of the situation and accepting it. Maybe you decide to work on the weekend, even though you don't really want to, but you make it leisurely, and you don't let yourself get stressed about it, and you fix a nice drink and a nice snack. You make it seem like this fun experience, instead of, “Oh man, I gotta cram this thing in, and my weekend is so full, and I hate this,” you get to decide the feeling that you are aiming for. I know we don't just say, “I'm going to feel happy,” and snap your fingers and it happens, but the more that we have an intention, the more likely it is to happen. 

Number 5: Question the shoulds that come up when you're stressed and overwhelmed. 

In this state of transition, there might be a lot of “should monsters” coming up like, “I should have more energy for this”, “I should be able to handle all this”, “Why am I so tired?” Are these familiar to you? These are very familiar ones for me, there are so many more.

The “should” is manufactured, it's not real. We don't have to hold ourselves to these “shoulds”. 

We can't always predict just how much energy we're going to have, or just how we're going to handle a situation. So if you're comparing yourself to your past precedent of what you can handle, what your energy can handle, maybe that's not relevant anymore. This is a very transitional time, we're recovering from a collective trauma. Maybe that standard does not hold, it probably doesn't, because things are different, and it's a lot. So you get to question those “shoulds” when they come up. 

I'm saying “question”, not “change” or “replace”, because we don't necessarily have to completely replace the thought. Just questioning a thought that isn't helpful is the first step, and eventually, you will keep watering that seed of “Oh, maybe this isn't true.” You get to decide which seed to water. 

I'm saying, “You get to decide” a lot in this episode, but it is true. If it feels like too much to say, “It's okay if I can't handle this,” you know, sometimes we aim to turn around a thought, and think the opposite of it, and we don't truly believe it. So if questioning is as far as you can get today, awesome, start there.

Number 6: Be open to sudden changes in energy.

You might think that you're going to be tired and unproductive all day because of how you feel when you wake up. But if you have a chance to say, take a walk on your lunch break, or take a quick nap in the middle of the day, or something that feels like a rest or a change of pace, everything could change with your energy level, at least for a period of time. I know that when I am tired and overwhelmed, I have this tendency to get extra negative, extra hopeless, and if I wake up feeling extra tired, I'm like, “This is a terrible day, it's going to be awful. I'm not looking forward to it.” 

I've been working on just letting go of that, because maybe I feel that way in the morning, and then something happens by 10am that completely changes my view of what the day is going to be like. A day isn't one solid unit of one mood. It goes up and down, and that's totally normal. 

For instance, I was worried about having time to write the outline for this episode, and I was thinking “Wow, I just am not gonna have the bandwidth for this, and I'm not going to have the time, I'm not going to have the energy. How am I going to do this?” It actually just came out completely naturally while I was on a walk. I just kept typing into my Notes app days before I needed to do it. I allowed that to happen, and it worked out great. I barely spent any time at my desk, like typing, except for kind of editing and finishing it up. 

So maybe the thing that you're dreading getting done, even if it's the thing you like, maybe it'll come out really easily. Be open to it, invite that in! 

Number 7: (These are in no particular order by the way, this one probably should be number one.) Prioritize sleep and rest more than you think you need to. 

Yeah, I always say that, but especially now, in a more stressful time, in a time when you're getting more busy. Ironically, you might think you don't have time to sleep and rest, but prioritizing it is what's going to help you get through that period of time while you're transitioning. 

Prioritizing sleep is great. But there are also many other different kinds of rest than physical rest, I also have an episode about this. Instead of getting super into it right now, I'll refer you to that one, I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but it'll be in the show notes. 

Rest can be any shift and change of pace that makes you feel more replenished, that helps your energy replenish. 

So maybe you need to make time for pockets of fun in your day. Maybe you need a break to go get a fancy coffee, or maybe you need to pull out some markers or fun colorful pens and just doodle for like 10 minutes. Maybe you need to blow off the whole day, assuming that you're not accountable to anyone else at that moment, for an adventure, if you have the flexibility. 

Or, where can you build in some pockets of fun, guilt-free, expectation-free creative time? That might be just the thing that you need to boost your energy and get you through the rest of it. If you get creative, there are a lot of different ways to just infuse yourself with a little bit of that during the day. 

For instance, on Mondays of this work engagement I'm doing right now, I have to be there before eight o'clock in the morning, and there's a lot of class during the day. I usually take a walk first thing in the morning, but I didn't want to get up that much earlier. So I walked around the neighborhood where this school is. I saw little lizards running around in the pavement and I saw this beautiful lavender that was super fragrant. I just had fun exploring the neighborhood and had fun observing things and collecting whatever ideas came up. In the midst of a workday, I didn't think that that was necessarily going to happen, but it actually did. So again, be open to it, maybe it'll happen. 


Number 8: Keep paying attention to how you feel. 

If you have the bandwidth for it, do a little daily check in. This doesn't need to be anything complicated. It can be ultra simple. It can be whatever you can handle right now. But just the simple question, “What do I need right now?” is an amazing question. You can ask that first thing in the morning, like I like to do. You can do it at night, like, “How did that go today?” It could be during lunch or before dinner, whenever you think there's a pocket of time in your day, when you have like five minutes to check in with yourself and think about it. If you are feeling a lot of crabbiness, a lot of resistance, a lot of negative feelings, that can be a sign of needing more grace, more time, and more space to give yourself to have these quiet moments. 

Any incremental amount that you can do is awesome, even if you really want to have that full day off and you don't get it. I’ve said it before, I'll say it again, don't discount the small actions, they can have way more impact than you think they will. 

As with any difficulty, you are handling it! You're handling it as well as you need to, even if you're not upholding your original plan, or original expectations. You're handling it, you're doing your best, and that is all we can do, right? 

Will you remember in a year, a month, even a week how long it took you to do something during this time? Probably not. And that's a great litmus test for Should I freak out about this? Or should I spend energy worrying about this right now? If the answer is no, then don't worry too much about it. Don't beat yourself up about it, you don't have to. Just keep going. 

So, I hope the suggestions in this episode are helpful for you. You don't need to do them all. of course, but try whatever sounds good to you, because yeah, it's busy - you don't want to be adding a million new things to your life, but do whatever seems doable and whatever seems like will have an impact, and go from there. Give yourself some kindness and compassion. That's what we're all about here. 

If you want some more structure around this, I also have an e-book called Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity. It goes through some reflection prompts for how you have a relationship with productivity, and how that's going. Then it also walks you through some ways to structure your day and structure your to-do list in a way that is realistic for whatever you have going on at the moment. Either in work and personal life, whatever your energy level is, it gets to flex with you. So people have found that to be a great tool, and I'll put that in the show notes as well in case you find it helpful, too. So that's it for today. Until next time, I'm wishing you the very best, and be kind to yourself.