Okaaay, I guess the pressure I put on myself is a known fact here in our house. Not just for work or writing, I mean for everything. Even on the weekends, lately, I feel pressured to make the best use of my time, get things done that aren’t work-related.
Sheesh, I just started taking a workshop to improve the quality of my sleep. And I can already feel myself ramping up to put pressure on myself to sleep better.
As if that will help.
Resistance is arising
Resistance is coming up a lot for me lately. I sit down in the morning on a weekday, intending to write.
Instead, my motivation to write goes completely out the window. The last thing I want to do is write.
So instead, I listen to an audio book. Or I draw. Or I get sidetracked by something shiny. Anything but writing. Anything that isn’t on my giant to-do list.
Motivation then returns sometime later, when I’m planning to do something else. For example, it might show up after 8 pm on a Monday night, when I really ought to be doing some of those getting-ready-for-sleep practices. [looking at clock warily]
Well, what’s an efficient, organized, driven person to do when faced with this unwillingness to just get to work already? Clearly I should figure out what’s blocking me and put even more pressure on myself to get past the block.
No. Turning up the pressure when I’m not getting stuff done sounds like it should work. But it absolutely doesn’t.
Why doesn’t pressure overcome resistance?
When I turn up the pressure, all I’m doing is pressing against the resistance that has come up. And when that resistance encounters pressure, does the pressure overcome the resistance? Does it just decide that my motivated self should prevail and yield?
Of course not. Instead, the resistance just increases. It’s getting pushed more, so it pushes back more.
The resistance is arising because the pressure is too much.
How do I know? Because in moments like this, when there’s no pressure to write, the words just flow.
What helps, then?
I’m not sure what will help, honestly. But it isn’t turning up the pressure.
I’m thinking self-compassion is probably a good start.
Setting smaller goals for the day.
Acknowledging the things I’m getting done that aren’t writing.
After all, I didn’t quit my job only to write a book. I also intend to use the time to focus on my health and wellbeing: cooking more meals at home, getting outside for walks regularly, clearing my space of clutter, managing stress, and yes, sleeping better.
I’m definitely making progress in those areas.
Let’s see if taking some of the pressure off helps me return to the joy of writing, rather than pushing myself into the chore of writing.
I suspect most people would not spontaneously and voluntarily give back part of their salary to their employer. I don’t mean donating to a cause, or chipping in for board games to play at lunch. I mean just handing your employer a wad of cash. “Here, this is for you.”
Your time belongs to you, just like your salary does. Moreover, time is one of the few things money can’t buy more of. You can only — at best — free up time you already have, like paying someone else to do yard work that would take you hours.
Think of it this way: If your company didn’t have health insurance, a retirement plan, an education reimbursement benefit, free food, etc., you could simply buy those things outright if they paid you enough.
If you didn’t get time off today, you couldn’t buy more of today no matter what they paid you. You can’t buy a second evening to add on after you work through the first evening. If you don’t take a vacation this year, you can’t buy a 53rd week. You can’t even buy an extra few minutes between the call that ended at 1:55 and the one that starts at 2:00.
When the time is gone, it’s gone. Before it’s gone, choose to do something with it that is part of your best life. And I am not thinking “side hustle” here (no judgment if that’s your thing). I’m thinking rest, family, friends, health, joy, creativity, meaning.
To clarify
This message isn’t for the people who get paid more if they work more. If you need to work more hours to get paid more to get by, or if you deliberately choose to do that (maybe you’re saving up for something important), that’s a different story.
I’m talking here to people who are paid the same whether they work 40, 50, or 60 hours.
And I’m also not pointing to people who are up and working at 5 am, people who are still in the office at 7 pm, or even both on the same day. I don’t care what schedule you work. I know someone who would goof off in the afternoons, go home, put the kids to bed, and then focus on work for a few hours. Same effort, just a different schedule.
For that matter, this isn’t even about someone choosing to work 50 or 60 hours because their work happens to be their passion. If you are in a divinely inspired flow state in your code, your art, your carpentry, your mission… you rock on for as long as that’s infusing you with life and joy.
But if that isn’t you, and you’re choosing work over taking time off, that raises an important question.
Why ARE you doing that?
I can preach about this, but there’s some reason why you’re so often choosing work instead of stopping.
Stop for a moment and think of those times when you look at your watch and it’s noon and you’re hungry… or it’s late and you’re tired… or your calendar is open and you’re thinking of scheduling time off… and yet you choose work instead of lunch, leaving for the day, or planning that vacation. Why are you making that choice?
I can’t answer that for you, but I can answer it for myself. For me, it’s usually some sort of insecurity. I am unsure if my efforts so far have been enough. I’m unsure if I will be able to meet some deadline, real or imagined. I’m unsure what would happen if I point out that the work to be done has exceeded the capacity to get it done. Or maybe I’m pretty sure what would happen (whether or not I’m correct) and it’s a consequence I don’t want to deal with.
Interestingly, it’s often paired with some sort of false self-confidence. Sure, I haven’t been able to get [whatever] done in the three days I’ve been working on it, but if I can just focus on it for another hour, then I’ll really make some good progress. An hour later, when I’m not further along, I’ll be disappointed in myself. Only further evidence of my inadequacy! I’d better stay another hour.
It’s your job to push back
Regardless of your seniority, but especially if you’re a tenured and experienced employee, it’s part of your job to push back when the work exceeds the time and capacity allotted. I’m thinking of my developers here. You’re the one who is in that code, and you have the full picture of what else is on your plate. Your manager has to rely on you to let them know what’s feasible and what isn’t. They might not like the message, but they need to hear it.
How do you deliver that message? What are the alternatives when there’s more work than capacity? Check out my earlier post on how to handle that situation:
Just remember that anyone who says “too bad, we need it done, so you’ll have to stay late” is saying something akin to “too bad, we need money, so you’ll have to give it to us.”
Friends, writing on Medium (and getting photos from Unsplash) taught me that I’ve been doing it all wrong.
Back in 2021 […pause here while I yet again grapple with the fact that it’s not still 2020, and that 2021 was in the past], I decided to update my home office environment. I replaced my desk, which had been a beat up kitchen table that I bought used from a coworker ten years ago. I got a handsome sit/stand desk — rubberwood top, nice big work surface, electronic height adjustment. Sweet.
But now here I am, adding photos to my Medium articles, and I start to see a theme emerge as I search. Consider this:
Here are the things you should have on your desk: a laptop, a beverage, your mobile device, a plant. Optional: a monitor, a lamp, a wireless mouse, and ONE additional decorative item (candle, books, second plant).
That’s it.
If necessary, you can swap out the beverage or the mobile device for one more item (like audio equipment), or just omit them:
No wonder I haven’t achieved the minimalist state of bliss yet.
What I’m doing right(-ish)
At the moment, I do in fact have a laptop, a beverage, and my phone on my desk. I have the monitor — bonus points, perhaps, for having it on an arm so it floats above the desk? I have a wireless mouse, albeit a clunky ergonomic mouse, not a sleek Mac mouse.
I have several plants… on a shelf nearby. Does that count? I have the lamp. And I do actually have a candle.
Already I’m in trouble, though. First of all, I have two laptops, one on top of the other, both of which are on a laptop stand. I also have two beverages — a travel mug with no lid for coffee, and an unsightly Nalgene bottle (how last decade of me!) for water. There’s a coaster, which I’m not using under my coffee, because today I have hot coffee, not iced. A mouse pad rests under my mouse. A glass plate under the candle protects the desk.
I’ve got a camera positioned on top of the monitor. Putting things on the monitor seems like cheating, like violating the spirit of the law, if not the letter. I don’t think the monitor is supposed to have little notes taped to it either, like the reminders to myself to “enable captioning” on meetings and to “GO OUTSIDE” already.
You can tell this person is away from their desk — there’s no beverage. (Photo by Ján Vlačuha on Unsplash)
And there are… drum roll please… WIRES. Oh no, not that. 🙄 I have a docking station to serve up the monitor/camera/power combination, and there are wires for those items, as well as the lamp. My device charger is currently charging one of the two sets of AirPods on my desk, and a set of wired earbuds hangs out nearby as a backup.
Uh oh, that’s [counting on my fingers here… second laptop, stand, Nalgene, coaster, mouse pad, plate, docking station, wires, phone charger, two pairs of AirPods, wired earbuds] twelve things already and I haven’t even strayed from the original list yet.
Okay. At the moment, I also have…
Writing, the old fashioned way
13. Paper, with notes scrawled on it. My notebook was out of reach and I needed to jot some stuff down. It’s actual three-ring-binder style notebook paper, which I haven’t bought in like 20 years so it’s old. I don’t know why I still have it. 14. Said notebook, now in reach. 15. Five metal tins full of pens, pencils, and markers. I’m an artist. I’m going to count all five as one item, on the premise that if I weren’t an artist, I’d only have one. 16. My journal. 17. Post-It notes.
I suppose if I weren’t working with paper, I wouldn’t need these items either:
18. A stapler 19. A scotch tape dispenser 20. A lone paperclip 21. White out. Do I need to explain what that is? Like a tiny bottle of white paint you can use to cover up errors you’ve made with a pen. 23. A kneaded eraser, which honestly I only have for art purposes, and which even more honestly I use more as a fidget toy than an eraser.
So, should I stop this foolish “writing” nonsense and just type everything into a Google Doc or a flat text file or something? Not going to happen, I’m afraid. Even though I own…
23. …a really weird ergonomic keyboard. The Kinesis 2 puts my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my back in a neutral position. I figure that it’s cheaper than surgery.
Side note: Did that contraption take a while to get used to? You bet it did. I kept hitting the Enter key when I meant to hit the space bar, so I had
leaf 8:08 a
leaf 8:08 lot
leaf 8:08 of
leaf 8:08 slack
leaf 8:08 conversations
…that looked like the above, where I sent some poor colleague one word at a time for several seconds before I noticed what was happening. Also, I kept typing Z when I meant X, which doesn’t sound so bad — except that my project was called “Apex,” so I was typing that wrong all the time.
Self-maintenance
The modern developer clearly functions on beverage alone. I haven’t transcended physical needs yet, so I have:
24. A box of tissues 25 & 26. Two bottles of hand lotion (one scented, one not) 27. Hand sanitizer… okay, I don’t know why I have this on my desk 28 & 29. A spray bottle of eyeglasses cleaner and a cloth 30. A bowl and spoon left over from breakfast
This person has stepped away to take a call — no mobile device present. (Photo by Rich Tervet on Unsplash)
With the exception of the hand sanitizer, though, I would not be surprised to find any of the above 28 items on a typical desk. Maybe the keyboard and mouse would be a little less ergonomic, but they all seem like normal stuff.
And then there’s this…
How about:
32. A skunk
Specifically, a Folkmanis mini skunk finger puppet. She is my “emotional support skunk.” I highly recommend having a soft, hand-sized plush creature to keep you company. She’s usually just out of sight when I’m on a stressful Zoom call.
I mentioned having plants nearby — that’s the Click and Grow, sitting on a shelving unit next to my desk. I put in new pods a few weeks ago, combined the leftovers from two packets into one, put the packet on my desk… and immediately forgot about it.
You see, the laptop(s) and stand have a sizeable unused space behind them. I don’t see it most of the time, because the laptop blocks the view. It wasn’t until I started writing this article that I actually noticed the abandoned packet of pods.
I could move it to join the other packets, but I think instead I’ll put the other packets in that otherwise unusable space. It’s right next to the Click and Grow, and if it’s out of my sight most of the time, that seems like a fine place to store stuff.
Wait, do some of the pictures above have things hiding out of sight behind those laptops? What could be behind this, for example:
The beverage, perhaps? Uh oh. Fear that. Don’t put your beverage behind your laptop. You’ll forget it’s there, move your laptop, and spill your coffee everywhere. Granted it will only ruin four other items on your ultra-minimalist desk, but one of those is your laptop. Don’t do it.
You live at home and that’s OK
Listen, I’ve got nothing against minimalism (no pun intended). If you are a real person whose real desk is populated only by your laptop, coffee, mobile, and a plain white pot containing either a succulent or a patch of grass, I applaud your dedication to tidiness and order. Especially if all of it is either parallel, or at 30 degree angles, to the edge of the desk. I see you, shutting off Slack and email and clearing your mind to focus uninterrupted on your Ruby coding. It’s lovely. Keep on keeping on.
For those of us whose desks have more than five things, though, a word of encouragement: no, you’re not doing it wrong. This trend is just the Medium and Unsplash equivalent of the houses you see in magazines: kitchens where the only items on the counter are decorative plus a basket of fruit or baked goods…
The pristine pictures are of a fantasy world. If you’re living that dream, okay. But if your real life desk (or house) doesn’t match this fantasy,
you
have
not
failed.
But do avoid putting your beverage behind your laptop. That advice is for real, y’all.
What’s the state of your desk? Minimalist glory with all four items at right angles and a tiny low-maintenance plant? Chaotic sprawl including last night’s dishes (and not like “a plate and a fork” but like “every item you used to make last night’s lasagna including a 9″x13″ baking pan and a spatula”)?
Most of all, is it working for you? Or is it time for a change?
I’m not saying it’s time to go stare at the wall. Well, maybe I am.
Maybe you’ve been firefighting most of the day, one urgent situation after another popping up like ads on top of a recipe blog. Perhaps it’s been an endless stream of meetings. Or maybe you’ve been working heads-down for hours (lucky you!), writing code for some huge project. Whatever the situation, it’s now late in the day, you’re dragging… but you’re trying to get “just one more thing” done before you dash out the door.
First of all, is it just me, or is there always “just one more thing” immediately after that “one more thing” you’re working on? An endless stream of what seem at the time like final tasks, each one inspiring the need for the next…
Secondly, let’s take a good look at how well you’re accomplishing that “one more thing.” Mmm hmm.
I can hear some of you now, saying, “Oh come on, I can totally code for 13 hours straight! My code at 8pm is just as good as my code at 8am.” I hear it because I’ve said similar things in the past. And I’m not here to suggest that you’re wrong. I mean, you’re probably wrong. But who knows, maybe your ability to code for long hours is truly exceptional. 🏅
I am here to suggest that you start to learn the signals that tell you when you are simply Done Coding For The Day, regardless of what the clock says or how long you’ve been at it. In other words, learn how to recognize when you’ve hit a wall. Here are some warning signs to watch for.
You’re forgetting stuff
You spend an hour debugging your code, only to find out that you’d assigned a variable the value "INSERT_REAL_VALUE HERE" instead of the correct value. You meant to go look up said real value and add it before committing that code. You forgot. Looking up the value takes you 20 seconds. Well, there’s an hour you won’t get back.
Or you send your boss an email about a spreadsheet, but you forget to attach the spreadsheet. You send a second email with the attachment, forgetting there are actually TWO spreadsheets you need to send. You send the second attachment. Two minutes later, you remember that you never added this morning’s data to the first spreadsheet…
You’re making familiar mistakes
Even though I’ve been using mostly JavaScript for several years now, other languages I’ve used sometimes still make an unwanted guest appearance.
For example: when I, yet again, use contains() on an array in JavaScript. JavaScript, yet again, reminds me that it doesn’t know what I’m talking about. It’s includes() that I want, not contains().
I have to look that up, every time. I had to look it up for this article. For me, the warning sign is not forgetting the function name. The warning sign is forgetting to go look up the function name.
You’re making newbie mistakes
If you’re a newbie, making newbie mistakes is normal! Nothing to see here. You can move on to the next section.
If you’ve been in this field a while, though, and you’re catching yourself using = (assignment) when you mean === (strict equals), for example… it might be time to step away from the keyboard.
You’ve gone way off course
Your code worked fine at around 4pm. You were just trying to fix one little piece of one little unit test. Now it’s several hours later, and not only have you not fixed your unit test, you have broken your previously working code in a way you don’t understand. And in the course of trying to fix that, you accidentally changed something else, and now your application won’t even start on your branch. And in your flailing attempt to get the code on your branch to work, you inadvertently committed a bunch of code to an unrelated branch…
When you are so far down in the pit of despair, my friend: stop digging.
You literally can’t see 😫
A comma where a semicolon ought to be. Missing quotation marks. A variable called employeeFirstName in one place and employeeFirstname 20 lines later. These things happen to us all now and then. But if “now and then” has turned into “three times in the past hour,” it’s time to give your eyes a rest.
Why do I get an error that customer-file-052122.json doesn’t exist?? I can see that customer-fle-052122.json is right there! (Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash)
Better late than never
If you don’t catch yourself faltering in the moment, you might start to notice the results the next day. You can’t change the past, but this is still useful information for the future!
Pay attention when, in the light of day, you see that all of your code from last night stinks. Or worse, your peers reviews your late-night pull request, and point out at length exactly what stinks about your code. Even worse, most or all of it involves basic mistakes you know you wouldn’t normally make.
Water under the bridge, but start to connect a certain fuzzy-brained feeling on day 1 with the unpleasant results on day 2. You’ll begin to recognize what might have been signs for you last time, and thereby learn what might be signs for you next time.
Regardless of whether you can make it through 13 hours straight of coding, or if you run out of steam much earlier than that, pay attention to what the warning signs are for you that things are going awry. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress by learning when it’s time for you to step back from the keyboard and go do something else — or go stare at the wall.
You’ve already got a full schedule when the boss asks you to take on a special project. Or maybe an urgent issue just jumped up above everything else you were planning to do this week. Or you’ve got multiple stakeholders, and all of them insist on being your “top priority”.
Before you start canceling evening and weekend plans so you can spend even more time than you already do at work: stop.
You only have so many hours in the week when you will be able to work effectively. And anyway, sacrificing your personal time might be necessary in a pinch, but it should be a rare occurrence. That time is yours!
When you start to see that you’ve got more on your plate than you can handle and still deliver the high quality of work you’d like to be known for, here are some strategies to find balance.
Something else is de-prioritized
If you’ve got room for five projects in your week, and your manager just approached you with a sixth, inquire about which of the other five you should set aside to focus on the new project. It may be that when your manager realizes you have five important things already planned, that sixth one doesn’t seem so urgent after all. Or maybe they agree that #1 and #2 are still your top priorities, but #3 could wait for later, and this new project should take its place in your workload for the week.
Someone else to the rescue
If none of your current projects can be dropped, perhaps there’s someone else who can assist with the new assignment. Or perhaps you can shift one of your items to someone else’s to do list in order to allow you to pick up the newcomer.
Be warned however that simply adding people is often not helpful. If a colleague is assigned to help you with one of your projects, but you are going to spend more time explaining the project to your colleague than you would spend just working on it yourself, this might not be the time-saver you expect. There are great reasons for working collaboratively, but short term time savings is not always one of them.
Scale it back a bit
Let’s say you learn that all six of these projects must get done, and they must all get done by you. Can the scope of any of these projects be scaled back to allow you to handle all of them? Perhaps the columns on the table you’re coding don’t need a sort option, after all. Or maybe you can just handle the “happy path” case for the new screen, the error handling pieces can be taken care of next week.
Step up now, step back later
In some situations, you might legitimately have a time crunch that can’t be avoided. There’s a hard deadline next week, and there’s nobody else available to pitch in. If that’s the case, you might choose to negotiate putting in some extra time now in exchange for a little extra time off after the deadline has passed — if you can trust that your management will keep that promise. A few late nights this week might be rough, but next week when you’re cutting out early on a sunny day or taking a morning off to relax, it might all be worth it.
Estimating your work is part of your job
It isn’t easy to say “no” (or even “not this week”) to management or other stakeholders. However, accurately estimating how much time a project needs is part of your role. Your boss might not be aware that the “simple” item you are coding will take several days, or that you need several hours of preparation time for that workshop you are leading on Thursday.
For larger tasks, you might need to break it down into sub-estimates. Then, when your supervisor says “what do you mean that will take six weeks??” you can calmly explain how you arrived at that number to help them understand everything involved with the project. And again, if they say “but I need it done in three weeks,” you have options: drop other work, get some help, scale the project back, and so on.
Think of it as your manager relying on you, as a professional, to let them know how much time you will need to complete your work. This can help make it a little less intimidating to speak up when the boss arrives to add more to your already packed to do list. And finally, more good news: this gets easier with practice!
