Energy and Spoon Theory

In my Better Living Through Design talk, I touch on how out of balance I was for a very long time. My mind would spin up with ideas and thoughts and plans, but I would almost ignore my body altogether. And one of the ways this showed up was in how much energy I had; I would assume at the start of the day that my energy was boundless (hah!) and that I could do everything on the list. Frankly, while I was a teenager, I pretty much could.

I'm also fortunate enough to currently be able in my life, without any disabilities. I know this will change in the future.

One of the big things that made me look critically at my energy and where I use it was introduced to me by a family member with a disability. I learned of The Spoon Theory, an excellent piece by Christine Miserandino, that gives a shorthand and approachable metaphor for what it's like to live with chronic illness or pain.

The Spoon Theory set me up to be more empathetic with others, and ultimately be more compassionate with them as well.

Lists Rule

It's a harsh truth that out of the myriad things I want to do with my life – and there are a lot! – I won't be able to do all of them. Or, rather, the odds are extremely small that they will all happen. It's not due to a lack of interest on my part; it's simply due to prioritizing what's important.

I know, I know. The default response to, “How are you?” is, “I'm busy.” We've taken busy-ness to be a merit badge of adulthood, suggesting that we have so so much going on that taking on anything else is just too much and will be the one thing that will put us over the top. The truth is that I do have a lot going on... and so do you!

Letting Go of the List

For a list-driven person like me, getting to a place of letting go of the list has been very difficult. It used to be that when I set up my to do list for the day, I'd feel genuinely bad if I didn't take care of everything on that list by the end of the day. And sometimes, I'd sneak things in to my own detriment (like doing a chore in the early morning or late night before bed). This was really misaligned with what I needed but, because I felt so much self-inflicted time pressure, I knew I would feel incredibly good if everything on the list was ticked off.

So if I had that attitude for a day's worth of items, imagine how I started to feel about bigger things. The life things. Starting a family! Buying a house! Dealing with Comcast customer service! Doing a budget! Instead of plunking those on a Someday list (a prioritization) they'd sit around on this big list of unsorted, unprioritized things I was going to do, and I'd look at that list and... yes, that meant I actually had a scorecard to compare myself to! It was setting me up for the negative, and showing all the things I hadn't yet done. I didn't see it as inspirational anymore; I started to see it as a failure tracker.

Working with the List

I will probably never be someone who isn't list-driven. That, I understand about myself. But I've had to really sit with my emotions and let my brain take a breather in order to get to a more comfortable place with them. I need lists. But, I don't need them to drive me; I need to use them as the tools they are and rely on my self to guide me. A big leap! And, it requires changes in the way I feel and think about lists.

The first idea I've had to relinquish is that everything I think of can be done now, and is all highest priority. Silly, right? It was easy for me to talk about the importance of prioritizing a product backlog, but it wasn't easy for me to say that about my own needs and wants. Yet if I didn't even pretend to rank things – and I historically didn't – I felt defeated. Instead, I had to really comb through the list of items one-by-one and be honest with myself. Anything that I couldn't truly do today... I'd schedule for another day, throw into the Someday list, or – big scary one – take it off the list. (And yes, that last one hurts.)

Another very important change: I add and prioritize self-care items to my to-do list. I've also added inspirational messages to the items' descriptions. It's a small gesture but it's been a big help. I'm the only one who sees them, but it's just a nice heads-up from past me. I observe, however, that I'm still struggling with having self-care items get deprioritized or bumped. Worse, they're often the first to go for me, because my brain seems to find things that are more important to do. Definitely something I am still working on!

How to Prioritize

When reviewing my lists, here's what I ask myself about each item. And yeah, I'm breaking out a list.

1. How much do I care about this?
2. How much do other important people care about this?
3. Can I see myself doing a good job of this (today/tomorrow/next month)?
4. When this is done, how will I feel about it?
5. Do I actually have time to do this (today/tomorrow)?

The first two work together: there are certainly things on my lists that are not of my own choosing, but other people in my life who matter are depending on them. I need to balance those priorities: it may be something that isn't terribly interesting to me (see #4!) but when it's done, I'll be glad that I helped someone else. If it's something I care about, then I should work to give it a high priority.

Question 3 is important too. If I feel I can't do a good job on something, then I ask myself if this to-do item is appropriate, really. Something like the fabled “clean out the garage” task is a bit large, and I might not be able to finish the whole thing in one fell swoop. Chunking something down gives me a better shot of doing a good job of it, which again, is important to me. This is also a prime time to ensure these actions line up with my overall intentions.

#4 is where my emotions come into play. If I simply will get the little kick from checking something off the list, that may be enough for some items (“Unload dishwasher.”) But for others it won't be. I try to imagine how I'll feel and react on the other side of that item. Will I be relieved? Stressed? Pleased? Proud? Sad? Thrilled?

And the last question: is there actual time to do this. That's where my calendar comes into play. I find it very helpful to actually schedule time on my calendar This puts my brain at ease and answers the, “But when will you do this?!” question. If I can't do it today, I notice a tinge of regret, but plop it onto a day when I think I can do it.

The End of the List

While I'm still a list fan, there are plenty of times and days when I give myself permission to go off-list and not do anything on it. When I first started this practice I felt immensely guilty, because I wasn't being busy nor productive. But now I see it as time to simply be, to simply exist, and let other parts of me take the helm for a while. This has given me a little more balance, a little more flexibility, and has improved my relationship with lists.

Growing Up Digital: Raising Tech-Savvy Kids

My son first used an iPad about 2 years ago, when he was 2 1/2. He was fascinated by the thing but, more impressively, he figured out the interface within a matter of days. Soon he scaled that knowledge up to apps, calling people (via phone and FaceTime), sending texts, and playing Angry Birds. He enjoyed using the camera and timer apps almost more than anything else, though: these acted as a view into his world and understanding what was happening around him.

Last year I met Elysse Zarek via Twitter, and we finally had the chance to meet (and enjoy tacos together!) earlier this year at SXSW. Elysse is the project manager and producer at Bloom Digital, a Toronto-based startup that promotes healthy childhoods. Their first app, Long Story, is an episodic game targeted at teens. It explores dating, gender, bullying, and all of the incredibly complicated stuff of growing up. It is a great game.

I got to talking with Elysse and her coworkers about technology and kids and how different it is for us, as parents, than it was for our parents. Most importantly we yearned for something beyond the whole, "How much screen time is 'too much'?" debate. It was frustrating, because there are bigger issues to explore around how this aspect of parenting changes you, too. For example: if you set up your kid with a Twitter account, when do you hand it over to them? Can she delete all of your "cute" tweets about things she said at the age of 3, or 4, or 5? How do you introduce the positive aspects of tech? In essence, how do you design your life to support a healthy relationship with technology for you and your children?

Elysse and I are proud to share our SXSW proposal with you. Our talk, Growing Up Digital: Raising Tech-Savvy Kids, will explore these topics in depth. Here's our SlideShare about it.

Growing Up Digital: Raising Tech-Savvy Kids from Paul McAleer

You'll be hearing more about this talk during the SXSW 2015 voting period, which ends on September 6.

But most importantly, if you'd like to see us at SXSW 2015, then you should vote for this talk right now. We hope to see you in Austin!

Personal KPIs

In the event you do want to measure yourself....

• Number of smiles per hour
• Ratio of promises made to promises kept
• Number of relationships deepened
• Percentage of day spent on self-care
• Number of bad jokes made on Twitter
• Decibel level of your kids' laughter
• Average width of grins
• Deep breaths per day
• Number of blissful thoughts

My inbox isn't a to do list

Let's make something clear: I love email. I have always enjoyed getting stuff in the (regular) mail, and when I first started sending and receiving emails on BBSes in the 90s, it was truly magical.

For a very long time I treated my inbox as a to do list. It's easy to see why: most mail apps are very similar to task management apps. There's a list of stuff. It can be labeled and organized and flagged and tagged. It has a bunch of things attached to it. But there's one important component  missing for me: context.

As an example, I have an email in my inbox right now with the subject "Worksheet". It's something I forwarded to myself from my Gmail account, so it appears to be from... me. Given that, what do you think it is? Yeah, yeah, a worksheet. But about what? When is it due? Is it due, ever? Who is it truly from? What do I need to do? What's the first action I need to take on it?

If I don't get that out somewhere else, preferably in Things, then all of that is weighing down my cognitive load. I look at "From: Paul, Subject: Worksheet" and see about 8 different tasks I actually need to do. And in that moment it overwhelms me and feels like a block, a thing I need to take care of instead of something I may want to do.

In addition, the flow of what comes into and out of my inbox isn't controlled by me, not directly. I get junk mail (requires processing), links to stuff to read (goes to Instapaper), email newsletters (sits in the inbox... for now), and various messages. All of it requires some action, usually much more than "just" replying, and my email client says none of that. None.

Because of those hidden tasks, my inbox is a terrible to do list for me.

PS: about those tools

Obligatory: I could certainly find tools that aid in this. Back when I was at a company using Jira (shudder) I wrote a little AppleScript to process incoming bug emails and convert them to tasks in my Inbox in The Hit List (an abandoned to do list app). And yes, there are apps and plugins and things that will just go ahead and make your inbox a to do list. But for my workflow, I strongly prefer to treat my to do list as a separate item from the flow of email.

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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Not So Big

I love talking about big and small changes we can make in our lives and in ourselves. I highly recommend small changes, because they can make a difference.

Those little things can be easy and juuust enough to change a routine, even a tiny bit. Parking in a different spot. Sitting in a different seat on the train than you usually do. Wearing that top at the back of your closet that isn't your favorite.

Then, there are bigger things. The way you start your day. The way you think about your body when you look in a mirror. How you treat that one co-worker. Your bedtime.

But how do we call some of these things "bigger" and some "smaller"? Let's try this: what if all of these things are equally small? What if the big things are really small things? What if the only thing separating the big and the small things is the way you're letting yourself approach them?

For me, that helps me understand what's holding me back from doing the big things - me! Observe your reaction and classification to these parts of your life and yourself, and then you'll gain the opportunity to understand, change, and grow.

Give yourself five minutes

Before I started yoga and meditation, one of the notions I carried around was that these things were big time commitments. Many parts of me are big on schedules and efficiency, so those parts were able to readily dismiss those practices as "too time-consuming". Over time I realized was that this was also something other parts of me classified as selfless: if I chose to do something else (under the guise of helping others), then I could never be called selfish, which had been a big bad label for me.

But self-care is quite important and, really, vital to our daily lives. Sure, when someone says, "Hey, can you do a yoga class with me for 90 minutes every 3 days over lunch?" that might not be something that you can do. But I'm here to say: don't let this be an all or nothing event in your life. Find time to do self-care.

Let's start today. Let's try for five minutes. Just five! And that's all. When you're done reading this entry, five minutes or so will have passed. That's not much time. I know: I have a family and a job and a commute and never-ending laundry too. It's not going to be perfect. But it's going to be.

Here are a few ideas where and how this could happen:

• During your commute: If you drive to work, give yourself five before or after you start the day. Radio off, eyes closed, and just listen and breathe. Easier on a train or bus.
• At your desk: Work work work work work... pause. Stop. Take a deep, deep breath - you know, one of those super deep breaths. Go for it. And then let it all out, and chill.
• Outside: If you have a desk job, take a brief walk around the block or in the parking lot. Get fresh air into your lungs - breathe all of it in.
• In the shower: Awesome place to think, awesome place to take a quick moment for yourself and just be. There's a reason lots of people like the sound of running water: it's very relaxing.

And what do you do during these five minutes? Obviously I'm big on breathing: it helps with awareness, and forces me to slow down and be in the moment instead of elsewhere. But I have also found that doing one or two yoga poses is a great change of pace too. You may want to do a power pose (Amy Cuddy recommends two minutes. Just two!) Meditation is a great thing to do too. Or, listen to a song.

Don't let it go

Here's what I know is true: after even doing one of these small things, I feel much more centered and relaxed. I come back into the rest of my life feeling more refreshed, aware, and ready. Find something that sounds good for you - try things out! - and give yourself five minutes today.

The Disconnect

It starts out very quietly. "I'll talk to her tomorrow", you may think to yourself, "instead of today. I'm not up to it." And maybe you aren't. Maybe your energy is low; maybe your capacity for compassion needs to be refilled.

Then tomorrow rolls around and you think about that lack of contact. "That's not going to happen today. Something got in the way." Maybe the dog needed a bath, or there was an important phone call that needed to happen. You bumped it down the to do list.

Soon, it's a week and you haven't spoken with that other person. That "Call her" task is a big fat number on your GTD list. The disconnection has taken root. You start wondering what's going on with them. Have you done something wrong? Are they okay? Wow, I hope they're not sick. Maybe they're "just busy". Are they still... there?

And then it snowballs into a month. Now it's been forever since you've talked, and the anxiety builds. It festers and lingers. And now what could you possibly say? How could you take everything that's been swirling around in your life for the past month and encapsulate it into a neat, 10 minute conversation? More importantly, how can you articulate these feelings and emotions to this other person?

How long does it need to continue before you reconnect? Does it need to continue at all? And more importantly, how long will it be until you realize that your inactions are just as impactful as actions?

It is actually a big deal

I've been in places where anxiety has absolutely gotten the best of me, and it can be all-encompassing. I've gotten so wrapped up in worrying about what might happen that I just don't do anything, instead. But that's a choice, as it ever was, and ultimately what does it serve me?

I learned through self-observation and self-reflection that I was giving anxiety a big, big part of my days. Just turning it all over to anxiety, and I'd push it way down. But that isn't sustainable. Worse, it can be painful.

Pull in your logical parts, and call on them to examine the facts. Watch what you're doing, in the spirit of empathy and understanding. Then, reconnect.

Reconnect with yourself. Reconnect with others.