It’s my first day off in over a week and I have a lot of things to take care of. Errands to run, chores to do, friends and family members to call. I told myself I could sleep in until 10 AM. It is now 1 PM and I am still lying in bed, scrolling through social media and watching brief yet touching videos chronicling the adoptions of special needs animals. I am not doing this because I’m having a nice time relaxing. In fact, the longer I lie still, the more restless I am. I repeatedly count down how many hours I have left to get all of my tasks done before sundown. As my time dwindles and my tasks loom ever more mountainous, my feeling of disappointment in who I have turned out to be grows. The small, idealistic version of myself that existed in 2002 never dreamed she would grow into a woman who found getting out of bed to eat breakfast impossible. I start to wonder if I have depression. I wonder if this is something that happens to everyone. Maybe I’m burnt out from working and going to school every single day. I have found no resolution to these questions, but I have found resolution to the problem of getting trapped in my own stillness. I simply have to make a decision. It recently occurred to me that the reason I find it so hard to get started on my to-do list is an organizational issue. My thoughts are jumbled and so I find the tasks to be too great to tackle. They all bundle together into one concept: busy. It is stressful. The first piece of labor one must do before ever moving is entirely mental. Once I decide precisely what I will do first, I feel ready to tackle my day. Suddenly I am not overwhelmed by all the things I have to do because I was able to parse out one single, surmountable task. Maybe I’ll even decide on a series of tasks that naturally flow into one another. For instance, I tell myself, “I will get out of bed and take a shower. Then I will come back into my room and put my clothes on. Afterward I will eat a bowl of cereal.” I realized that inside my mind I had decided to do all those tasks but because I had not decided on the order in which I would do them, I felt overwhelmed.
I’m up and moving, but reluctantly. Now it can be easy to fall into what I like to call the Reward System Trap. I tell myself that once I accomplish a task, I will reward myself with 15 minutes of glorious inactivity before I move on to the next thing. This inevitably causes me to sit around, self-hateful, for at least an hour between each task. I think the Reward System is very important, but the key is not to reward myself with a few minutes of video gaming or social media. Instead, I try to include the reward in the task so that the day does not feel broken up into “fleeting time that I enjoy” and “slow-moving time that I dread.” For instance, I have a playlist of songs that I really like but will only allow myself to listen to when I’ve earned the privilege. This playlist goes on when I’ve somehow forced myself to go running, or clean my apartment, or whatever other onerous task I have to bribe myself to do. These songs sound like victory and never fail to get me through The Thing. I’ve even used an audiobook with a particularly compelling storyline in the same way. If I really wanted to know what happened next, I would cook myself something instead of ordering takeout.
Thanks to the power of decisions and playlists, I’ve been productive for several hours. Unfortunately, I am not even halfway done with my tasks. I am feeling burnt out and have been looking with increasing longing at my laptop for the past half hour. Now is the time for a Burn-Out Break. I want to put on whatever show I’ve been watching, but I know I’ll end up bingeing the whole thing if I do. I need a break from boring, but if I do something fun, I’ll never stop. Time to do something that is both productive and relaxing. Meditation, drawing, writing a poem. Anything that will make me feel better about myself for having done it. The hard part is making sure to relax enough to regain all of the mental energy which was lost in the laundry, but not enough to become a barely-breathing blob. Naps are traps and must be avoided if at all possible, so if meditation threatens to put me to sleep, I do yoga instead. Maybe I’ll put in earphones, play a podcast, and go for a walk. Then once I’m very invested, I can continue the podcast as I continue back into my chores, now reinvigorated by the brief moment of fresh air.