It’s October, and Q4, the last quarter of the year (Oct-Dec) has officially started. Q4 tends to be stressful at workplaces, because it was the last stretch to achieve annual goals. There are plans to execute, budgets to spend, and lots of pressure before the holidays.
At the same time, much was written about COVID making people reassess their priorities and demand more time for family and for themselves*. It made me wonder whether this year’s Q4 was going to be more relaxed than in previous years.
So I asked people how they felt.
These are the results from my survey on LinkedIn. I also asked my email list what they thought. Combining the results, a whopping 75% said that this year was WORSE, while only 25% said this quarter was the same or more relaxed than previous years’ Q4.
But why?
In the discussions that developed on my social accounts, my friends suggested several explanations. One is that people are dealing with more pressure overall, because 2021is such a complex year. Another is that stress from 2020 is carrying over, like a “stress debt” that we’re still paying.
A different way to look at it is that we came back to “normal” office work in the summer and autumn of 2021, but we came back different. More tired, or less willing to hustle like we used to. Some people may feel empowered by this, and able to set better boundaries. Others may feel like they simply burn out faster than before.
If you’re not one of the people who resigned and redesigned their work life, you too might be feeling this kind of increased stress, and wondering what can be done. The response to hustle culture (or burnout culture) has always been the magical “self care” but we all know that a scented candle and some meditation are not enough.
While I firmly believe that true change will come when employers embrace the understanding that hustle culture is bad for everyone, including their organizations, the immediate thing for an individual to do is protect their own wellbeing.
Self-Care can be tricky
Check out this great piece in The Lilly (a Washington Post publication) for some advice on how to self-care effectively, and actually feel rejuvenated. I totally relate! For years, I used to feel that self care was another stressful task on my to-do list and wasn’t able to fully enjoy the benefits.
Some recommendations from the article:
- Practice self-care proactively to avoid burning out, rather than reactively after you’re already feeling low energy. When you’re low, anything could feel like a chore.
- Ritualize your practices – take coffee outside, take a few minutes to switch between work and home, maintain a relaxing evening and/or morning routine.
- Ensure that there aren’t areas which you consistently neglect (spirituality, financial wellbeing, physical environment.)
- Maintain boundaries.
One paragraph spoke to me in particular:
Try breaking down your never-ending to-do list so you aren’t feeling constantly overwhelmed by everything at once. Have a weekly to-do list that you divvy up into daily to-do lists, and create a hard maximum that gives a generous amount of time for every activity or action item so as to not feel like you are constantly behind schedule. Don’t underestimate the power of checking everything off your daily to-do list. This helps you feel like you’re being productive while also building your own sense of being able to do it again the next day.
Based on my personal experience, this is my top advice for dealing with burnout and overwhelm. I will say this even more bluntly than the Lily article:
Do not attempt to do everything, but rather do the bare minimum that creates substantial results*.
Every day I ask myself what are the top 3 items that would get me toward my weekly/monthly goal?
Compared to how I used to live, it is still surprising to me how little I expect myself to achieve for me to consider the day a success. The key is selecting the items that are really the most important and most effective ones for making progress.
Then, there is a second element to changing your mindset about success and productivity: I do something enjoyable to celebrate my success*.
From a neuroscience point of view, setting yourself up for success and rewarding those successes, trains your brain to want to do more of that. If you like, you can think of it as becoming purposefully addicted to the sense of completion of those daily tasks. This, in turn, makes you want to do more and feel even better. Conversely, creating lists that are too long and then constantly beating yourself up for not completing them, tells your brain that you are failing, and is a self-fulfilling negative prophecy.
Doing less has been a game changer for me. I highly recommend you do the same!
* RESOURCES
- You may have heard the term The Great Resignation of 2021. If even has a Wikipedia article! To learn more, check out NPR and Forbes.
- My short post on The One Thing by Gary Keller.
- My post on the importance of celebrating success.
Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels
I am definitely someone who can feel that thrill of checking things off the to-do list. I realized very recently though that I was feeling more burdened than lifted by the list, so I’m experimenting with a what-I-did list, instead. So far I am loving the freedom!
I love the “what-I-did list”! It certainly offers freedom. I use a “to-do” list and a “could-do” list, so only top priorities are actual requirements, and then there is much more freedom.
Love this article and wise advice, Shlomit! I think I’ll try out your approach of choosing 1-3 doable, most important items to get done and then celebrating that–rather than holding a long to-do list over my head!
Thanks so much!
Thanks for sharing these tips. I’m feeling the Q4 pressure coupled with life stress. At the heart of this is self-care and living within my values.
Alignment with your values is key!
Wow! This is so aligned with so much of my thinking. Hustle culture has led to rampant burnout, and in my communities, it’s hit women much harder than men. (Maybe because of the second shift problem which only got worse during the pandemic.) Thanks for the helpful and powerful suggestions.
Yes!! By all means, women have been hit harder. An important thing to remember about the second shift (regardless of who is doing the work) is that much of that work has to do with a very high standard set for us when people did do housework full-time, and are not necessarily conducive to a happy home. Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo are amazing, but will I be happier if my t-shirts are folded and standing vertically in a drawer? I’m not sure. Choose your standards, your values, your happiness. It’s not a competition.
Thanks for this, Shlomit, I resonate with all of it. Creating space so not everything is an emergency is the best self-care I’ve found!
I love the advice to do self-care PRO-ACTIVELY. It’s so much easier to manage stress when you have enough willpower left to do something like yoga or go for a walk. I just wait until I hit the wall and do self-soothing things like drink too much wine. Definitely NOT rejuvenating.
Yes! And a long time challenge for me because I’m so anti-habit and routine. Having a good set of habits, like sleep, mindfulness and exercise, done automatically, is huge. Needing energy to do these basics – means you’re already not managing well.
Oh, I love this, of course. I am in the camp of drawing better boundaries and being kinder to myself. I start every day with reading because this is such a fulfilling activity and if I wait until the end of the day, I’m too exhausted to do it. I’ve gotten a lot better about my quarterly/weekly/daily planning and review and renegotiate. It’s not perfect but I have very few days where I don’t feel I moved the ball forward in some area of my life. I’m going to bookmark this one to come back to.
You are definitely a great example of sticking to healthy habits, Michele! Your yoga streak is unbelievable.
I relate to these reflections very deeply. The beginning of last month I realized I had been tapping into my reserves excessively. I think the drive to go “back to normal” along with the added stress of still being in a pandemic minus my daily self-care routines took it out of me. I always have to remember to pace myself and keep self-care a priority every day! Thanks for this reminder and reflections.
This “back to normal” notion is really tricky and can make us do too much without even noticing!
Great article, Shlomit! Thanks for the tips and links.