It Might Hurt a Bit

On the past couple of episodes of Designing Yourself, Whitney and I have discussed some great stuff - how we handle stress, and how we recharge ourselves. The great thing about these discussions is that they've provided context and perspective for the work I've been doing on myself over the past few years.

Let me be direct: I have spent a lot of time being "busy" in an effort to avoid dealing with feelings, identity, relationships, and a shitload of other things. Collectively I feel like we have made the notion of being busy too simple to attain and boy, there is a part of me that feeds on that. I can always catch up on Twitter, watch a complete series of a TV show, and plug away at that never ending to do list. But what does that all mean? What does it get me? When does the well-organized person organize in some downtime?

Now, downtime is something I define differently than you do. Sometimes downtime includes zoning out reading blogs or shopping for clothes. Sometimes it means lots of activity with my family, and sometimes it means being very alone. Often, it's an independent thing though - breathing, slowing down, and being observant of the world instead of my busy-ness.

Without downtime and work on the self, I experience profound avoidance. Gang, it's hard to work on emotions and relationships and intentions. It is extremely emotional. I have had lifelong assumptions about myself challenged, and moving from a place of observation to action can be downright terrifying. But it is also profoundly freeing. It is both. And that's where, historically, I have walked away from the challenge.

I've walked away because it's beyond logic and beyond my brain, which has been a driving force for a significant part of my life. I've walked away because I don't know how to do it. No one told me how to best manage this stuff, or not manage it, and just... be with it. Be with myself, be me in those moments. There's no manual. And even then, it delves into the very definitions and notions of who I am. Not trivial, ultra challenging, huge stuff.

I've put some ideas around this. and will be sharing these tools at WebVisions. It may be great for you, or it may not, but it's working for me. I sincerely hope that you can find something that works for you, no matter who you are, in what I share.

Because what I've discovered, nearly by accident, is that my imperfect and wonderful brain can only take me up to a precipice of fear. It's a combination of all my parts, and my support system, that can truly push me through it.

Onward.

Found out

On Friday my friends Amy Silvers and Lori Widelitz-Cavallucci spoke at Madison+ UX on Imposter Syndrome. (This was also the talk they presented at IA Summit, and you can see the summary here.) Watching and listening to their talk over the web kicked up my own feelings on this matter.

In short, for years I waited for the other shoe to drop and to be found out as a fraud. Years. Even when I was a young, good programmer, a part of me held on to a fear that one day someone would basically shoot holes in whatever I was doing, and as a result I would feel incredibly humiliated and embarrassed.

During that time, there was a direct impact on the way I worked. It might not have been so noticeable in the darkroom or in the code, but the part of me that was a vocal critic and on alert for being called out was always present. It was always there. As a result of this, I rarely spoke about my work - and promoted it even less. That's because there were enough parts of me saying, "This isn't all that good." It might have truly been good stuff, and to be honest, probably was! But I had a hard time recognizing that and an even harder time taking a compliment. (I mean, people were complimenting me on my work? My internal barometer on that was just way off!) This is also part of the reason I preferred to work by myself for so very long.

But I've had to adjust

Good design work is people-focused, whether it's research or life design or aesthetic design. And that means it's far more open to criticism - but it's also far more open to connection and appreciation, as well. The risk is higher and the reward is higher too.

The biggest things that I've had to account for are my own self-confidence (which is only emerging due to intense work on the self) and my experience.

My experience is something I can now count on, and it appeals mostly to my brain and not so much to my heart. It's relatively easy for me to justify design decisions based on decades of work, including what works well and what doesn't. I say this not to brag (my ego will chime in momentarily!) but I say this as a point of fact: when you work in a field for a very long time, you simply start to see the broad patterns and gain that understanding. I considered it to be table stakes when it came to myself, instead of giving it the true honor it deserves. (It was hard work!)

But the self-confidence is the much, much harder piece. It has required sustained, intense focus on my self, identifying who I am, and being able to even get to a place where I see my work having value and being worthwhile - even to myself.

For instance, it is only within the past 6 months that I have been able to hear a compliment from someone about my work, take a moment, absorb it, and thank them instead of doing the knee-jerk "thanks!" response. I would do the latter because it was polite (brain-focused, other person-focused, society-focused) and not really do what I needed to do to truly hear the other person and take that in (me-focused).

In addition, working on Designing Yourself has given me ample opportunity to promote this great thing I'm doing. On the one hand, it may look easy to post a tweet saying that the show is great. On the other hand, it stirred up a lot of conflict in me. I was overly concerned about appearing too self-promotional, too selfish, too... lots of things that I saw as negative. That, in turn, would make me more vulnerable.

But as my work has continued to get closer and closer to me (less of an abstract), this vulnerability goes part and parcel with it. I can't hide behind code when I'm on stage talking about my experiences. It leaves me totally open. And that's where I want to be because that's where I need to be. Even if someone in the audience, or someone online, thinks I'm a total fraud.

More than Numbers

Technology has made tracking ourselves in numbers easier than ever. At a glance I can tell you how many miles I ran last month, last year, or in the last 3 years. I can tell you how many people follow me on Twitter. I can tell you how many songs I have in my music library, or how many photos I've taken with my phone. I can share a lot of numbers with you.

But numbers never, ever tell the whole story. Ever. They do not express value. They are not the story. They are not us, ultimately. We regularly try to assign value to numbers - in terms of stats, in terms of size and weight, in terms of those "good" and "bad" extremes.

How do we assign value to what we do, and what we say? How do we understand not the quantified self, but the qualified self?

Redesign

I redesigned my website last month. Did you notice it? I'm hoping you did, because I tweeted about it and made a big deal about it. That's great!

What about the redesign I did a week ago? That's the one I didn't write about. Was that one noticeable?

The poorly-kept secret is that we're always redesigning. We make changes along the way, try things out, and if they don't work we may go back to the way we used to be. Or, those changes may stick and bring forth new changes.

Change is always happening. Redesigns are always happening. Do we want to call attention to that change, or not?

I Never

As we learn and grow and live we create the story that is our life. We write that story intentionally... or not. Others read it. We live it.

A good story requires editing and revision. It's not static. It changes over time. It expands. It contracts. It has a journey and lessons learned. It can be fun or serious, or a little of both and everything in between. It can be long. It can be short. It can be all of these things.

But first we must ensure we're allowing ourselves to be open to many possibilities, many directions, many plots, and many subplots. What are you leaving out of your story that really could be let back in? How can you be more open to what's happening right now and do something truly great with that?

Big thanks to Whitney Hess for inspiring this one; our conversation around this topic will be on the next ep of Designing Yourself.

On hunger, food, and self-care

It was a pretty standard workday. 11am rolled around, and my stomach was grumbling. I didn't know what I wanted to eat, but I knew I needed to eat. And then something came up. In that moment I chose to delay having lunch and ending my hunger. It was, in retrospect, not a good choice.

As a consequence of that, I was ravenous half an hour later when I finally allowed myself to get some food. I hadn't planned the meal out - that morning was a busy one, and I thought, "I'll just buy a lunch today." I hopped in the car and drove towards a store where I was going to run an errand after lunch. "Surely," I thought, "There's something in that vicinity." And there was. But it was roughly my 8,900th choice amongst restaurants.

I was fortunate enough to be able to afford and choose a meal. But I let myself get very hungry and ultimately, neglected my own care. I thought on this a bit, and realized there were techniques I could have used to help myself along the way.

I'd like to note that while this is my experience, I've observed it in many, many other people too.

Eat when you're hungry

This is a radical concept (!) trumpeted by people like Michelle Allison. She talks about normal eating and pulls in a definition from the great Ellyn Satter (whose work in this area is essential reading) that includes this:

Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way.

It can be challenging to do this - very challenging. There is a lot of social stigma and stereotyping around this idea and it impacts women more than men - and particular, fat women the most. It's also exacerbated by standard American workplaces where people eat at their desks in lieu of going out for lunch; this removes a degree of privacy when it comes to food, but it also establishes a boundary and sense of normalcy. Food is okay at our desks, but not okay in a meeting, for instance.

So eating on one's own schedule can be quite difficult sometimes. I've lost count of the number of times I've walked back to my desk with a meal I chose and I wanted, but felt very concerned about others' judgment of it. ("He's eating something fried!" "He's eating lunch at 10:30?")

With regards to schedules: it took me a long time to realize that it was okay for me to eat lunch at 11 instead of 12, which is when I was almost always hungry for a meal. I had to listen to what my body needed first, and then plan for the comments or feedback I would receive. I'm not done with this, but I'm in a better place than I once was.

I've talked about eating solo. While eating and sharing a meal with others can be a social activity, it can also be fraught with judgment and wanting to follow norms. Whether alone or in a group, one's food choices are always one's own.

Planning in advance

There are parts of me that love to plan. These parts also like to take a break when it comes to lunch, outside of picking up a few frozen evol bowls during a weekly grocery shop. I also try to balance those feelings with the very real notion of not feeling like a particular lunch on a given day. ("Another sandwich? Ugh...")

Still, having options is what matters here. At some point prior to that lunch, I could have put together a sandwich, or looked for leftovers. (PB&J is probably my winner for least effort and highest protein, which I dig.) While those might not have been my ideal lunches the next day, they became very real options... and were preferable to going out and having an unsatisfying lunch. (As a bonus, this ends up being a money saver for me as well.)

By the way, I found that having my meals at work on Monday morning is the best for me. That means I need to do some planning over the weekend and bring in all of my stuff at once on Monday morning, but then I don't need to even think about it during the week... and that is a huge, huge relief for me.

Prepare yourself

One last thing: you need to rely on yourself to feed yourself. This may sound elementary, but it is true. I can not and should not rely on my workplace to ever provide the food or snacks I need to get through the day - even if they do provide snacks (and almost every one of my workplaces has done this). I try every day to bring at least a couple of snacks along with me, in addition to my meal. I have a decent sense of when my body typically gets hungry, and I'm still learning what best fills it up.

But if I get to work and I have nothing in my bag? I know I'm either a) going to be hungry, b) going to choose from non-ideal options, or c) going to need to stop at a store and get snacks. And frankly, c) doesn't happen often. That's planning in the moment, which I'm not great at.

This idea is a subset of the idea of a "food bag", one of the tenets of the Overcoming Overeating program by Carol Munter and Jane Hirschmann. It's such a good idea that I think it can apply to everyone, even if you have a positive relationship with food. Here's more info on what a food bag is. (That article includes a lot of terms like "glitter", "legalizing food", and the like.)

It's all about taking care

You know those candy bar commercials that show people literally not being themselves when they're hungry? Putting aside the commercial message for a moment, that's actually a great analogy. When I'm hungry I am unable to focus. I am dissatisfied. I get a little cranky. These are things I don't necessarily want to feel.

All of these techniques and ideas - normalizing food, eating when you're hungry, and having the best options for you - are a big part of taking care of one's self.

(For more info by people much smarter than I, I recommend When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies which is a great read for people of all genders.)

Taking Care of Your Needs

Last year I made a number of big observations about myself. One of them was that I was - to borrow a tech term - DDOSing myself. I wasn't giving myself the opportunity nor the space to allow my needs, my wants, and my desires to take any kind of shape.

Looking back at that piece, I found one throwaway sentence I want to come back to.

I'm thus carving out a space where I can get my needs met and also still be a non-jerk.

At the time I wasn't quite sure what that space would look like, so I didn't discuss it much. That post was more about the fact that, oh yeah, I have needs - and they are important. At the time, giving myself permission to feel that was a big step forward.

Just having that feeling is a great start, but I felt a little lost on what to do next.

Knowing Your Needs

I find it useful to check in with myself about my needs. Then, and only then, can I deal with them in a satisfying way. Here's a few ways I approach this.

First, is it immediate? If my stomach is rumbling, I'm hungry. I should try to not wait until I finish my current task to take care of myself unless I am physically unable to do so (like, say, giving a talk.) Whitney & I discussed this in episode 1 of Designing Yourself. (transcript here, below edited slightly for clarity)

...I can definitely remember times when I’ve held off going to the bathroom because I’ve really got to finish this screen or I’ve really got to finish this thing. And for goodness’ sake, your body’s saying, hey, we’ve got to go now. ... that’s a part of self-care. And it’s really weird to me, and very troubling when it’s a matter of something like going to the bathroom. These are really basic things. ...these are super basic, and we deny them. We say, "Hey, that can wait." Is that really taking care of yourself, really?

Short answer, no! It's not! If it's immediate, take care of yourself now. NOW.

All right. If it's not immediate, then I start to figure out when I can satisfy myself. For instance, if I feel the need to move my body, I check in with myself and see what I can do. Can I do something now like stand up from my desk and take a walk? No? Okay. That's sad. I think about time next: can I find a time soon that I can do this?

Mind you, a part of me will be upset if I can't find that time right now, but I need to call on other, calming parts of myself to say, "No, it's cool - we won't let this slip. It's important." One example: I would very much like a massage. But it requires a bit of planning (checking the schedule, finding a babysitter, scheduling the appointment, finding the money for it in my budget...) so I can't do it right now. Thus, I'll pop it in my to do list and prioritize it appropriately.

If the need isn't immediate and I feel it's important, then yes, it comes down to prioritizing this against everything else in my life, which is probably the most difficult thing to do. A massage for me isn't just a one-hour period of rest and care; it's also the planning that goes into it, including putting myself in a state of mind and presence where I can truly enjoy the massage and not feel stressed. That is not trivial!

The planning piece, then, includes all of those tasks outlined above plus this: is there anything that my family needs that is more important at that particular moment? Now, I always used to default to, "Yes!" in an effort to be selfless. But I found that if I always did that, I was actually not helping because it meant I was saying no to self-care. And when you don't take care of yourself, then you can't take care of others. Simple as that.

(I'm also in a position where I'm not, say, taking full-time care of a family member, or the like. I recognize this is a luxury and a privilege.)

At some later time, I'll (hopefully) come back to my to do list and break out "Get a massage" into discrete tasks. It's mechanical, but the mechanical parts of me need to lend a hand so I can have my needs met. Otherwise, I'll feel longing and sadness over having "Get a message" on my list and seeing no forward progress on it. And then I'm not really taking care of myself.

It's important

Again, self-care is important. Over time, you'll find an amount of care that you need. Sometimes it will be a lot more and sometimes it may be less. But be sure to not cut it out of your life altogether.

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Observations on self-compassion

Last year, a theme emerged for me around change and growth. This year, it's refinement and improvement. With that in mind I want to come back to something I had posted in 2013 about compassion for ourselves:

It's easy to [be compassionate with myself] with things that are in the past, for me, but it is also limiting as the past can't be changed. So I'm working on being compassionate with myself in the now.

And sometimes, that is what I need the most.

A few weeks ago I was out running errands. I drove to a store, parked in a spot, and got out of the car. I started walking towards the store, car remote in hand, and locked my vehicle. Not three steps later I realized, whoops, I forgot my wallet in the car. My mind flashed an image of it sitting in my cup holder.

My first reaction was to berate myself out loud in a small, quick comment. "Forgot your wallet, motherfucker."

This time, I heard myself. And I wasn't happy with it. I had simply forgotten my wallet, but a part of me felt so strongly about this that it felt I had to say something downright mean about myself, to myself, out loud. I would never treat anyone else this way. So why would I do this to me?

The Change

There were a few things I chose to do in that moment to help myself.

The first, as noted, was to really listen to myself. Have you ever had that feeling when you're saying something and a part of you feels, "Hey, wait! This isn't me talking!" It just feels like your voice and words are on autopilot, and you're elsewhere. Well, that part may be right. In my case that wasn't me talking. This was something I had internalized (deeply) and given space and power to.

I then realized, wow, I do these tiny insults a lot! And it's over little things too, usually forgetting things - like not taking out the trash, or leaving something on the kitchen counter at home.

In an effort to help, I gave myself permission in that moment to hear my internal dialogue. What parts of me were talking? What parts were checked out? And most importantly, what parts did I need to tug on to help me out in that moment? It's like parenting: if someone insults your kid, what do you do in that moment to help and what do you do to help your kid prepare for the next time that happens?

Since I had just been insulted, I needed a highly caring part to bring in the love and reassurance, and also gracefully defend myself.

Tough work

As I said last year, looking back and being compassionate with my past is much easier. It's not here now. It's a hairstyle I chose in 1993, or a size I was in 1987, or an emotion I felt in 2003. I'm removed from it.

Being compassionate with myself in the present requires me to draw on loads of skills and feelings. It demands practice and patience, but I'm feeling more me because of it.

Fresh Start

Personal finance software is generally dreadful, but in my household we've settled on You Need a Budget (YNAB) because it works closest to how we think about money. It's not perfect but it's certainly quite good.

We've been lost in a sea of budget software and planning for a while now, but we're finally getting to a point where YNAB and long-term plans are beginning to gel. It's starting. That doesn't mean we have it licked, and that means we do mess up.

With other finance software, recovering from a mess up is hard. It means a new file and complete reorganization, or reconciling out the wazoo. This is something YNAB is great at because of a single feature: Fresh Start.

Lots of people start over to reorganize, or because they stopped using YNAB for a while and just want a fresh start.

Fresh Start is great because it's got a positive vibe about it. It's not a monstrous, computer-y thing. The app simply says, "Hey, cool. Happens. I got this." And it does. It's a surprisingly human and guilt-free process, notable in both the software and financial worlds. Beyond little things like animations and copy, it proves that some features of products can be warm and helpful.

A Brand New Way of Seeing Things

I'm struggling to apply this same idea to my current state of GTD tools. The things I've felt in the past - my brain has it covered - are returning again, and outside of using Things for a daily check on what's up, my inbox is a mess of dozens of items. During my run this morning I pondered why this was.

Part of it is that I'm afraid to admit that this isn't quite working for me. It feels like I've failed this system in some way and, in turn, failed myself. While I will forgive myself, it would be lovely if Things offered a way for me to recover from this other than blitzing everything away manually. That process of deleting all my items? It's painful. Each swipe is a tiny reminder that I didn't get that thing done either.

I attach a lot of emotion to this, as you can see, and I suspect others do as well. If we set out to do something one way and it doesn't work, the question is, how long does it take us to recover and try once again?

Beaten to the Punch

It is extremely likely that someone else has written a post about this, and I'm going to do this anyway.

A common argument I find myself using for not doing something is this: someone else has already done it. I often think of it in the context of a written piece or a tweet. For me, it starts with my critic chiming in. "Surely everyone I know has already read this and knows it, right?" "What can you possibly say that will be new for anyone?"

Then another part of me comes in and tag teams. ​"Yeah, you don't really need to talk about that." "She said it already and she said it so well. No reason to do it." "Don't bother." "A waste of time."

And then, another part piles on: "You know what else you could be doing? Folding laundry. And that to do list isn't organized yet. And what about putting some coffee on for tomorrow morning?"

You can see how quickly this could spiral from, "Hey, it'd be cool to talk about not doing something because I have something to say!" to, "You know, so-and-so had a great talk about that and there's no reason to rehash it."

However!

Each of those parts of me are making assumptions and they're probably not correct. They want to be correct, but they're not.

Maybe no one else has heard or read that one post or watched that one video. Writing and thinking and sharing feelings - with myself, with others - is hardly ever a waste of time. And yeah, there's a to do list and it will never end.

But this is my experience, and it's unique. Sure sure, it may be very similar to someone else's… or maybe not at all. But a very judgy part of me wants to make that call on your behalf. Instead, I'm going to let this one go and see what happens.