Part 2: Zap the Time Suckers
Take back your life and your career. Get more YOU time. As SLP’s we need to regain energy and time loss that happens on our way to burnout.
Time suckers are the activities we engage in that are not aligned with our bigger goals or priorities.
Say you want to stop bringing work home, spend more time with your family, or get in some exercise, BUT, you’ve just spent the last 25 minutes scrolling on Facebook, watching YouTube, or talking about how much work you have to do. THAT is a “time sucker. ” These activities have a net, negative consequence on the back end. By net negative consequence, I mean, although it may seem like that time is restful, it usually isn’t, because in the back of your mind, you are “shoulding” on yourself about other things you “need” to get done. WE need to put true rest and relaxation into our lives- but that ain’t it!
There’s a difference between engaging in activities to truly relax, versus engaging in activities for the purpose of avoiding negative emotion.
The thing is most people aren’t really aware that we’re avoiding negative emotion or even that we’re feeling negative emotion specifically moment to moment.
In life, there are circumstances that happen. We, as human beings, have thoughts about those circumstances. Your thoughts; everything you think, causes you to feel an emotion. Your emotions, drive your actions in life. The action you take in life, or the things you do, create your overall results in life.
Every year without fail, I have a $h*+ ton of evals. and reports to write at the same damn time. I used to think monotonous, repetitive thoughts about that circumstance. Like, I have too much to do, There’s no way I can do all of this, There’s not enough time, I’m so tired, I’m going to have to spend all night doing this and 50 more thoughts like these. Those thoughts caused me to feel stressed and overwhelmed. When I feel stressed and overwhelmed, it’s exhausting and I want to avoid those feelings. Soooooooo I used to commiserate with coworkers, scroll on my phone, eat candy from the prize box, stop at fast food… rather than just completing the dang report.
There’s nothing wrong with relaxing and kicking back, except for engaging in those “times suckers” may have a net negative consequence on the back end causing deeper stress and further burnout.
There are two types of emotions that we experience in life. 1) positive 2) negative
If you are a human being, (which you probably are if you’re reading this). You’re going to experience approximately 50% positive emotion and 50% negative emotion in your life. That is part of being on earth as a human. It’s a good thing because it would be impossible for us to experience comfort without discomfort, joy without sadness, excitement without disappointment…
The thing is, in our modern society, we have mad access to a seemingly unlimited amount of IMMEDIATE PLEASURE.
We have TV, social media, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, smart phones, and so. much. more. These things are awesome and amazing. It’s so fun that we have access to all of it. However, most of us tend to use these pleasures to actually avoid negative emotion. And we use them to a point of where we have conditioned ourselves to be intolerant of feeling negative emotion.
Most people think that negative emotion means that something has gone terribly wrong. Which then makes life even worse because you are beating yourself up about feeling bad. That’s a double bummer.
So many people, without being conscious of it, avoid negative emotion. And how we avoid it is by engaging in activities. (time suckers) that aren’t serving us in the long run.
To break this down even further.
I want to propose that there are two types of negative emotion;
1) useful negative emotion
2) useless negative emotion.
For example, I would consider non- useful negative emotion to be emotions like regret, guilt, confusion, worry, compare and despair, overwhelm.
Burnout can come from our attempt to escape these negative emotions.
What are some of your “escapes? ”
Let me be clear. There is certainly NOTHING wrong with kicking back and relaxing with a movie or social media or any of these things.
I want to make the distinction. Truly relaxing has a positive impact in the long run, where as, engaging in “escapes” or “time suckers” has a negative impact in the long run.
Then to add insult to injury, when we escape our negative emotion, it actually increases negative emotion and makes you feel even worse. So that tips your scale of emotion. You would probably end up feeling even more than 50% negative emotion in your life, which sucks.
There is a second type of more useful negative emotion. For our purposes, we’ll use the umbrella term of discomfort.
Today I had a goal of writing 9 progress reports in a row. I did NOT want to do it (who does). But nevertheless, I sat down to write my reports.
I felt so much discomfort.
I wanted to look at my phone. I wanted to eat candy. I wanted to complain to my coworkers. I wanted to escape of the discomfort of writing those reports -sooooo bad, BUT I DIDN’T, I STAYED IN IT.
I allowed myself to feeeeeeeeel that discomfort and DO what I set out to do. I purposefully felt uncomfortable, gave myself the nudge to keep going. And I did it.
When I doubled down, was done, and I frickin’ wrote those nine progress notes back to back, I felt pretty damn good. I know if I had eaten lots of candy, I would’ve felt guilty and frustrated. I know if I had taken out my phone and started scrolling on Facebook, I’d still have work to do and feel overwhelmed and exhausted. If I would’ve spent that time complaining to my coworkers I might have felt justified and acknowledged, but then stressed still needing/wanting to complete my work.
So you can see here in this example of how I purposely allowed myself to feel negative emotion. FEEEEELING discomfort of pushing through really paid off.
Now this is not something that comes naturally, it is a skill to be learned, developed, practiced and applied. That is one thing life coaching does.
I help helping professionals (like you) stop dreading Mondays, eliminate overwhelm, recover from burnout.
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