Can you give yourself a break?

I used to create a detailed itinerary whenever I went on vacation.

I'm talking a literal Excel spreadsheet with a timetable for each day outlining where to be and what to do when.

Sounds fun, eh?

Friends used to tease me for the geeky level of structure and organization I brought from my career into my "free time".

On the flip side, they appreciated the logistical load my excessive planning took off their shoulders and I took pride in appearing to always be on top of things, efficient and productive, never wasting time. (Why on Earth would I sit for an indeterminate length of time on one beach when there were so many other sights to see?!)

The truth is, any time I tried to do "nothing" (usually in response to pleading from exhausted friends), I felt physically uncomfortable - a sort of itch in my body, like ants running all over my skin - and a strong urge to get moving again.

That's when I started to realize that it wasn't just a desire to achieve or a curiosity to see the sights that was keeping me going like the Energizer Bunny - I actually didn't have a choice. What I mean by that is that being still, not producing anything, allowing things to evolve organically wasn't something I was willing to permit myself to do.

I perceived it as too risky - too risky that people (including myself) might label me as lazy or incompetent; too risky that if I slowed down I might never find the energy to speed up again; too risky that I might lose my reputation for being a hard-worker who does whatever it takes to get the job done.

I realized that I had a hidden commitment to never appearing idle and to not losing my reputation for being a driven achiever out of a fear that people might decide that I wasn't valuable or worth keeping around.

I also realized that I had been measuring success - or at least how successful I felt - largely by how much I got done. Being efficient and ticking lots of things off my to-do list felt more satisfying than slowing down to consider my effectiveness and whether I was actually investing my time and energy into the right things.

There were some upsides to my insatiable drive for sure, particularly professionally, but there were also some significant downsides to never being able to switch off: the risk of burnout loomed large, threatening my health, wellbeing, and performance; and from a bigger picture perspective, the risk of a life spent busily focused on quantity rather than mindfully focused on quality of experience.

...

Rather than continuing to soldier on, I now realize that like an athlete after having pushed through a strenuous workout, I need to carve out space to recover.

To reset and take stock.

To reflect and nourish myself so that I can learn, grow and evolve into an even better version of myself.

Like yin and yang, inhaling and exhaling, exertion and rest, it’s through embracing and creating space for both opposites to exist that we cultivate a sense of equilibrium, long-term sustainability and high-performance.

Individually and collectively we’ve been through a lot this past year and I'm starting to hear from more and more people that they're feeling the toll it's had on their mental health.

Let's not fall into the trap of not giving ourselves permission to shift gears or of defaulting to the simple or habitual metric as a measure of our success.

The old adage rings true: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.