Hello, Speech Language Pathologists! We need more Time and Energy. Over the next weeks I’m going to review “5 effective ways SLP’s (like you) can get your time back.” If you are on my list, you received the pdf. cheat sheet outlining all 5 strategies. I want to take this opportunity to explain why these strategies work and how to get started in applying them.
Part 1: Front-loading -Here’s the tip
FRONT-LOAD your days, weeks, months, years.
SIMPLY- make decisions to plan and do tasks ahead of time.
Eye Roll… I get it
You might be saying to yourself, “this lady is crazy. I’m already pressed for time and energy and now she wants me to spend more time and energy front-loading and planning things -seriously!?”
I want to acknowledge you. When you are feeling burned out, exhausted and dreading work, the idea of front-loading feels very overwhelming and possibly …annoying. I recognize that. The fact that someone would even suggest it, smh. But- stay with me. I’ll explain why it works in a more specific way so that you can get the benefit. I can’t think of anything more valuable than your time and energy. We need SLP burnout recovery.
What is front-loading?
I googled it. It means to distribute or allocate resources unevenly with a greater proportion at the beginning. So what I’m asking you to do is think of ways that you can basically plan and do ahead of time. Stephen Covey, says “Begin with the End in Mind”
Let’s contrast-Burnout vs. Applied front-loading?
What happens when you are in burnout? You’re losing time and energy like water running through a kitchen strainer; You’ve got energy and time leaks all over the place. That’s why we complain of feeling “drained.”
With front-loading you are making a conscious investment in the beginning so that you can gain time and energy on the back-end.
This is like someone saying to you, “On Monday, you are going to pay me $100 bucks, and then on Friday, I’ll give you $500.” You would definitely invest in that deal – right?
It’s hard to make that initial investment
You’re simply going to think about what you want to do and make those decisions ahead of time. Easy right? What’s the problem?
Anytime you decide to create a new habit, your brain isn’t going to want to do it. In fact your brain might throw a full on fit. If you’re tired and burned out, your brain might forego the fit and head straight for confusion, apathy, depression… (good times). Most of us know that planning ahead is a really great idea, but you’re just barely getting through your day.
Making decisions takes a lot of brain energy.
When I was in a place of overwhelm and burn out I did not want to plan for my job in fact I did everything I could to try to avoid my job. I was resisting and avoiding basically anything that had to do with work. Something I didn’t realize was all that resistance and avoidance was an energy leak. It was actually draining tons of brain energy and causing part of the fatigue I was experiencing. Not to mention all of the negative emotion, discomfort and lack of confidence that was actually perpetuating my downward spiral into burnout.
That caused me to resent my job even more, feel less confident about myself, engage in compare-and-despair type thinking, and get defensive with anyone that told me I needed to do more planning or any more work. I was completely pissed off and resentful (on the inside). A real-life, downward, negative spiral I was creating for myself.
So if this is where you are, I get it.
Why it works; 4 concepts involved with front-loading
- Decision fatigue
- How your brain responds to indecision
- Decision debt
- DECIDE ahead of time
1. Decision fatigue
As SLP’s , inevitably, we make a $h@t-ton of decisions throughout our day. BUT, when you’re in burn out,
you are making a lot of decisions by default.
That still takes energy. In fact, it takes more energy, because the decisions you make are not with conscious intention and aren’t very effective. Then you have back track and re-make decisions. Decision fatigue is a real thing that happens in your brain. At the end of the day, I’m sure you’ve experienced it.
So front-loading allows you to use the most conscious, clear energy available to decide from a place of intention and purpose.
Let me give you some examples: because I hadn’t packed my lunch ahead of time I would leave work go through the drive-through which actually caused me to gain weight and make me feel lethargic. Intern, that gave me less energy to do things I needed to do and things I wanted to do. From there, I felt self conscious, had a lot of self loathing… you see the path there?
2. How your brain responds to indecision
Your brain reacts to unanswered questions or unanswered problems, unset goals.
Your brain likes to solve things so when you don’t answer a question or solve a problem, your brain will keep asking the question, and asking the question, and asking, and asking… over and over. THAT causes a lot of energy loss. We don’t realize it because it tends to be unconscious, but when you don’t just draw a line in the sand, and DECIDE, your brain will be asking and asking and asking. Hello- stress and burn out.
Stop. Answer. Decide. Move forward.
So even though it seems like a simple decision of deciding what you’re going to have for lunch. If your brain is saying “I don’t know what I’m gonna have for lunch” in the back of your mind, it’s asking and asking that question. THAT is an energy drain on your brain. When you could more consciously direct that energy toward something else that’s more productive and more in alignment with what you really want to create in your life.
3. Decision Debt
After you’ve been deciding things by default for a while…you will go into decision debt.
Those unanswered questions will start to pile up on you. You’ll get the sense of feeling trapped.
So for example. I was not deciding ahead of time how many reports I would need to complete by a certain time/schedule. So I would have to make those decisions on a day-to-day, hour by hour basis. What happened was I would have to make the decision over and over and over again. Then I would be stressed because I needed to turn things in.
Humans don’t work very well or as effectively when stressed so I was working even slower, slogging through, highly distracted, and spinning my wheels.
Grrrr. Mad at myself. Resentful of my job. I was in a place of decision debt
4. DECIDING ahead of time (front-loading)
If you give me $100 now, on Friday, I’ll give you $500.
I hope I’ve made a case for deciding ahead of time. Here’s examples of the decisions I made to help me recover from burn out and actually save my career as a Speech Language Pathologist. Actually, this strategy, overtime, has afforded me the ability to shape my life- little by little, one decision at a time. Some of these decisions are going to seem silly. Here’s what happens when you begin to apply this strategy though…
There is a compound effect that will begin to build exponential momentum in your life. Little things add up.
- I decided that I would not leave work without doing my daily documentation-ever.
- I decided to write one sentence with a piece of data for each client daily for each session.
- I decided to enter that documentation throughout my day as often as possible meaning sometimes I even use the end of my session to enter.
- I decided to always eat the same thing for lunch
- I decided to make my lunches ahead of time on Sundays
- I decided to figure out what I was going to wear on Sundays for the whole week
- I decided I would commit to a finite amount of time to write an evaluation.
- I decided to make myself a yearly overview plan to work in themes which made planning more constrained and quicker
What to do?
Schedule a self planning/ thinking session
Step 1. I want you to use some focus and constraint here. Think of 1 or 2 things that aren’t working for you.
Now for this you are going to need to have some self awareness and self perspective. Notice that your brain will want to go to all the things you can’t really control in the moment. (like the number of students on your caseload for example…) In the moment, that is something you can’t change. Your brain will want to spin out and complain about all the things you can’t change- but doing THAT IS one of the energy drains. So I have to ask for your willingness to focus on 1 or 2 things that you CAN control.
When I was in burnout- I was working with a life coach and she helped me get a handle on some of the things that were in my control. Try to take a birds-eye view of your life.
So that you can purposefully and intentionally design your career and your life the way that you want it, you need to make those decisions from a conscious place.
Go for a walk or even sit in your car for an hour to give yourself space to think of where your energy leaks are.
Step 2. Decide with certainty one small habit that you are going to employ and DECIDE ahead of time how you will carry it out. Start small here. See examples above.
The Bigger Picture- Your Future Self
I’ve had years of practice front-loading one small decision at a time to create my life the way I want it. It’s an ongoing, fine-tuning process.
Some of the things I have decided on -that I am doing now- I would have said were completely impossible when I was in a place of burnout. Who are you becoming?
So I would encourage you to
- be patient with yourself
- start small
- allow this process to work.
Compound Impact
You begin to stop a few, small energy and time leaks with intention. You then, can use THAT energy and time with even more purpose and consciousness. These front-loaded decisions will begin to snowball to a point of where your life might be in a place you didn’t know was possible. This is just part 1 of the SLP Burnout Recovery Plan. GO. GET. IT.
Need help sorting all of this out? Schedule a free consultation with me.
