Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

pandemic

It’s a Time Warp

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Time has taken on a weird, bendy quality in these pandemic days. Quick quiz:  Without checking any available resource – do you know what day it is?

‘Nuff said.

People tell me the lines between work time and non-work time (and school time and family time and every other kind of time) have blurred and bled into one another in a crazy grid of insanity.

We’ve never been busier even though we have no commute.

We’re swamped although we don’t leave our house.

We’re burned out while all we’ve got is time.

It’s a time warp.

The other day a client told me that she’d spent eight and a half hours in back-to-back Zoom calls. When she finally lifted her head from her computer screen, her family had made dinner. She ate, then promptly fell asleep on the couch. Where she stayed until she woke up the next morning and got ready for her 8am Zoom call.

A friend shared that since she’s monitoring her children’s studies during the day, she works well into the evening. “I’m pulling more hours than ever, mostly because I feel so guilty about parenting during the work day,” she said.

Let me lay out a few facts for you, just as a reminder:

  1. We are in a global pandemic;
  2. As I write this, it’s only getting worse;
  3. We’re in an economic downturn;
  4. Which, as I write this, is only getting worse

It seems to me that we can all use with finding a way to manage our time, our selves, our stuff better. Fortunately, I know exactly how to do it.

Set some boundaries.

No doubt, you’ve heard those three words strung together before, said by me or by a million other well-meaning folks. “Set some boundaries, set some boundaries, set some boundaries” – like a droning mantra.

Sets your teeth on edge, am I right?

I know, I know: You haven’t done it because boundaries feel so harsh and self-centered.

And they might very well require you to say no.

Which feels very icky.

Because you’re a person who says “yes!” Happily, with an exclamation point or two.

Boundaries, you fear, may make someone so angry that they will never, ever, ever speak to you again.

To which, I say: Maybe that’s a good thing in a pandemic. One less person in your bubble. #Justsayin

Boundaries work because they allow you to know where your edges are. So, let’s think about one that’s easy to set and could help you a ton. Ready?

Your boundary is simply saying, “That’s it. I’m done with work for today.” And then push back from wherever you’re working in your home to do something else.

That’s all you have to do.

You can say this at any time of the day you want to say it. Personally, if I get an 7:15am start with my first client of the day, I’m pushing back from the desk at 4pm.

Which means that from 4pm on, it’s Michele Time.

I read books, I take walks, I exercise, I chit chat on the phone with friends and family, I cook, I watch TV, I listen to music, I eat.

I store up my energy for the next day.

Now some of you dear readers are saying, “Fine for you. But I have a JOB and other people have access to my schedule and put things on my calendar and I’m getting paid more than my dad ever got paid and there’s a shaky economy and I can’t lose this job so I need to hustle and never say no and deliver, deliver, deliver.”

All I can say is that coffee is probably not helping you.

I also can say that I have a JOB and people have access to my calendar and put themselves on it and I’m also getting paid more than my dad ever got paid and all the rest.

I still set boundaries.

When you believe that you cannot set boundaries due to external pressures, you are giving every bit of your power to those external forces.

It’s OK to hustle. I am all about the hustle. Just do the right kind of hustle.

The kind that fills up your tank, not the kind that depletes it.

And hustling within boundaries you set for yourself fills up your tank.

Start small by deciding when your workday is over and push back from your desk, knowing that you’ve hustled enough for today given everything you’re experiencing and enduring.

Give yourself and everyone else around you a break by saying, “That’s it. I’m done for today”, and go about your life.

This pandemic will end one day.  It will all become a misty watercolor memory and no one will remember that on a certain Monday in October you pulled a 15 hour day.

But you’ll always remember the toasty crunchy feel of the burnout you experienced because you didn’t set a simple boundary. That knowing will stay with you forever.

#justsayin #onemoretime #setaboundary

 

Making a Plan – When Making a Plan Feels Really Hard

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It’s so hard to make a plan when you don’t know what next week will bring.

Will you be in quarantine? Will someone you know – and rely on – be in quarantine?

Will you be sick? Will anyone you know be sick?

Will you be in lockdown?

Will your job end next week? Or, if you’ve already been dislocated, will you get a job next week?

I love a good plan. I mean, I built a whole business around helping people make plans, so I better love it.

But it is so very hard to be planful when there’s so much is unknowable.

There is something you can do, though. Know what I’m doing? How I’m coping?

I plan where I can and let go when I have to.

For instance.

I plan a weekly menu.

From the weekly menu, I plan my grocery store run.

I plan how to stock my pantry so I’ll have what I need in the event there’s another full lockdown.

I plan when I’ll wake up in the morning.

I plan when I’ll start work and when I’ll finish for the day.

I plan when to make calls to or socially-distanced visits with family and friends.

I schedule exercise.

I identify three things each day that I know I can accomplish, and I put a very large and satisfying check mark next to them when they’re done.

[For those readers in America, let me just mention that I’m also planning to vote. In person, early. And I urge you to create your own voting plan, too.]

If I worked in an office, I’d plan for performance reviews to be done when performance reviews are always done, and I’d plan on hiring if hiring needed to be done, and I’d plan the annual conference, too, maybe using a nifty virtual platform.

What I’m not doing is: I’m not planning post-pandemic travel. Or Thanksgiving or Christmas for that matter because there are still too many variables to be able to make a plan that will stick.

I’m also not planning that this thing will be over by a date certain because who knows when it will be over.

All I can plan for is that there will be a lot of things I can’t plan for in the next six or eight months. 

I am, though, going to focus on being resilient, and adaptable, and kind to myself and others as the coming days unfold. What an accomplishment that will be!

Sounds an awful lot like a plan, doesn’t it?

 

A Pandemic Is Not A Snowstorm

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Those middle-of-the-night epiphanies? If you can remember them – which is always a big “if” – they often don’t have the same resonance in the daylight that they carried in the wee small hours of the night.

Last night I had a clarity awakening and this morning – surprise of surprises – it still felt true.

I realized that I have been treating this pandemic like it’s a blizzard. I’ve been enduring and waiting.

You know, like you spend time wondering and betting how many inches or feet you’re going to get. You wait for the snowfall to slow down so you can shovel the sidewalks. You wait for the snowplows to get to your street. You bake brownies and cookies and cakes, thinking that you’re living time out of time so none of the indulgences will actually count.

But this pandemic is not like a blizzard. Not at all.

Enduring and waiting has only made me frustrated, anxious and mad.

No, what’s happening now is a total shift in the way I live today and will live for the foreseeable future. A client who works in a big company says they are planning to have to deal with this virus and its impact at least until June, 2021.

June. 2021.

So what I need to do for myself is wrap my arms around the is-ness of this new life.

Which means I need to embrace the necessity of exercising at home, and the non-negotiable need I have to take a brisk walk every day.

I need to eat smaller portions because I’m using fewer calories.

I need to drink less alcohol because as I mentioned *calories* and if you don’t really know what day it is, how can you keep track of how many glasses of wine you’ve had?

Taking care with my schedule is even more important because it creates guideposts for the day.

If I can create something everyday – intentional creativity – I will grow an important part of my brain.

Connecting with family and friends routinely rather than happenstance-ly will ease my loneliness.

Prioritizing my rest, keeping my environment tidy, dressing the way I want to dress that day (and showering, let’s not forget that) are things I can do to ensure a good quality of life.

And, helping others is a thing I will always do. If I’m running to CVS to pick up a prescription or to the grocery store every other week, you know I’ll be reaching out to neighbors to see if they need something.

My new normal is markedly different from my very-recent normal in that I’m no longer enduring, no longer waiting.

I’m living. I’m improving. I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m helping.

All within a container that is safe for me, and safe for you, and safe for all of us.

Hell of an epiphany, huh?