On Not Overdoing It: How you can do more with less
Do Less by Kate Northrup
You want to know something ironic?
I started reading Do Less by Kate Northrup several months ago. When I first cracked it open, I found myself hooked. Captivated by her stance on time and energy management, vowing to undo my 32 years of tangled views on:
non-stop, exhaustive, hard work
=
worthiness
(…to have fun, feel good, do whatever to my heart’s content)
(Or as Kate states: "I thought that productivity is what made us valuable. Look at what I've done, and I'll show you how much I am worth.")
Then guess what happened? I fell back on my old patterns and dove headfirst into the “I can do it all! By myself! I can knock out twenty things on my to-do list, while juggling an on-the-go baby, balance a business, clean our home from top to bottom, workout, take classes, study, write, plan for milestones and be a present wife, mom and friend! All while making it look like a cake walk.”
Wrong answer.
I mean, I did actually take a cake walk: I walked over to get a piece of cake because my stress levels were through the roof and I found myself taking it out on a piece of dessert. I became too tired at the end of the week to really enjoy valuable time with family and friends because I burned the candle at both ends and over-did it cleaning our home for their arrival. To take the cake, I dreamt about what tasks I had to do the next day, so my sleep was impacted, too.
I was tired.
But sometimes, you have to learn by trial and error.
For me to truly understand the meaning behind doing less, I had to continue to do more and experience how that mentality was a detriment to my overall well-being, and let’s just say it, to my life.
And you know what else?
It most likely isn’t serving you as well.
Do Less
by Kate Northrup
I know a book is worthwhile recommending when I find myself feverishly highlighting a majority of its content in an attempt to pull out the "Oh, wow!" quotes that stop you in your tracks and make you re-read it just so you can allow it to sink in.
Do Less by Kate Northrup is that book for me (ironically it made me "Do more thinking," but in a impactful and productive way, with the goal of having you shift your current "stuck" views of day-to-day busyness and call in energy efficiency that will result in you doing less and doing more of those things you love).
Even as I write this, I am shaking my head in astonishment with how many "problematic" topics Kate speaks to. I say problematic, because the ones she homes in on happen to be the select few topics that I have the most difficult time absorbing and applying to my own life like:
relationship boundaries
honoring your body + what it is telling you
embracing sleep + rest
Essentially, calling bull shit on what our culture told us how we should be and act and replacing it with how WE {us, ourselves, because not one person is ever the same} need to be and act for our own ultimate benefit.
Did these capture your attention because they are all tough topics to apply to your own life, too?
Good. Then you are in the right place.
Kate breaks her chapters out into experiments: ways you can experiment with doing less and see how it actually allows you to do more.
These includes:
Experiment #1, Track Your Cycle + The Moon (how your cycle impacts your energy levels and productivity, AKA don’t push yourself when you aren’t set up for success, honor what your body is telling you)
Experiment #2, Discover What Really Matters to You
Experiment #3, Listen to Your Body
Experiment #4, Check Your Vitals
Experiment #5, Receive Help
Experiment #6, Ask for Help
Experiment #7, Simplify
Experiment #8, Manage Your Energy (protect yourself from energy robbers)
Experiment #9, Make Sleep a Spiritual Practice
Experiment #10, Become a Time Bender (time prosperity)
Experiment #11, Streamline Your To-Do List
Experiment #12, Open the Lines of Communication
Experiment #13, Surrender (… of control …)
Experiment #14, Let it Be Enough (YOU are ENOUGH)
I thought the best way to approach her thought-provoking book, was to pull out those quotes from various experiments that made me question what the heck I was doing in thinking that an over-productive lifestyle was a healthy way to exist in the first place.
{With the emphasis put on this blog being a sneak peek to a really profound read, I suggest either listening to it on the go or reading an experiment / chapter a day and allowing it to soak in!}:
Global Evidence for Doing Less
Kate brings in the stats on how doing more specifically in the workplace isn’t actually doing us any favors (shocker!). One of these fascinating stats, thanks to Harvard Business Review, notes “that very few people could [remain] in the state of high concentration on things that really moved the needle forward, like writing about new ideas, for more than four or five hours a day, total.” She also states that research performed from The Lancet, involving more than 600,000 men and women, rendered that women who worked 49 + hours a week led to poor mental health, illness and potential shrinkage of our gray matter that oversees self-control and leads to making poor decisions (hello cookie binge in the pantry - ouch!).
Ask For & Receive Help
Kate notes “Once you start opening your eyes to [receiving help], you’ll start to see that there’s help available for you all over the darn place. […] The people-pleasing do-it-alls within each of us want to reply ‘Oh no! I’ve got it. Don’t worry about it!,’ but then we end up overwhelmed and resentful that no one’s helping us.”
Let me clear here: Asking for help DOES NOT MEAN you are not capable of doing it by yourself. It DOES NOT MEAN you are any less [intelligent, able or valuable]. What is DOES MEAN is that you are smart enough to know that what you are asking help for, doesn’t light you up. It is a task, errand, chore to you that depletes your energy little by little and if you just asked for help in the first place, then you could have kept that energy, spending it doing something that actually DOES fulfill you.
Actions that get you going, that act as energy fuelers, will increase fuel in your energy tank. It is a chain reaction that leads us to…
{Protect} Your Energy
Kate’s remarks on how to manage your energy effectively, largely on how you choose to share it with others, makes me rubs my hands together with eagerness (“Identify and plug those energy drainers” as she says!).
"There are people who are energizing, and there are people who are draining. And sometimes people who you used to find energizing now drain you. It doesn't mean they're bad, it doesn't mean you're bad. It just means the relationship isn't serving you anymore or the way you're engaging in the relationship isn't serving you."
She goes on to suggest that you either change the dynamic of the relationship that isn’t serving you or release that relationship altogether.
Example being:
Has a close friend turned your friendship into a competitive match of volleyball?
Maybe a co-worker has a flair for the dramatics and is putting on a show?
Turn your own dial + energy down on being open in receiving that conversation and turn the conversation around {shut it DOWN!}. This can create a new tone for that rapport and steer you out of choppy waters that leave you exhausted rather than energized.
On the flip side, if competitive Cynthia keeps rearing her match set head or dramatic Dorthea bursts through your office door every day with cloudy personal weather reports, then maybe it is time to reconsider the relationship.
Make Sleep a Spiritual Practice
[I am going to ask that you have beginner’s mind with this experiment. As if no one has ever told you that getting more sleep is important. Because as soon as I did that myself, I allowed this knowledge to sink in and to prioritize it.]
Simply put, Kate noted that "If you are looking to maximize your waking hours, you really need sleep." Sleep is one of the most productive things you can do for yourself and your body. Just a few of the positive benefits listed in getting more sleep includes: “our long-term memory gets organized, we integrate new information, cells get repaired, the immune system is strengthened, etc.”
This experiment seems so darn simple, but I find it to be the hardest one to keep consistent. Think about it, the more you prioritize getting adequate sleep each night, the more productive and happier you can be each day! The last positive point on her list really stood out to me: “strengthens immune system” Do you know how many times I got sick from overdoing it and how far it actually set me back in my productivity?
Sleep is important.
It is time for us to shift our mental state from "getting more sleep means that you are lazy" to "getting more sleep makes you productive."
1.
My two greatest takeaways from Do Less is firstly, that adopting this fresh mentality is a process. It is going to take time to unravel years of how we thought we should take on each day and how we need to get clear on those areas that either need improvements or we need to do away with altogether.
I have found that reminding myself of one-word mantras throughout the day has really helped me with the art of doing less. For example, Kate mentions the concept of time bending (essentially, living time with the sense of abundance (time prosperity) rather than scarcity (time poverty)) so I remind myself whenever I start hearing a clock ticking in my head of the word “abundance” or “time bending” and visualize time stopping so that I can continue doing my tasks with ease and relaxation.
Doing less may gradually occur more for your own version of trial and error, and that is OK. It is a sign that you are learning what is best for YOU.
2.
Secondly, I realized that in order to do less you have to get to know yourself more.
{Do less of…}
Don’t go out into the world trying to get to know someone else before you truly know yourself.
[side note: I see you selecting player one in the comparison game, looking at what Betty Sue is doing and what is working for her: you are TWO different people, you were made beautifully, uniquely, perfectly different. What is working for her, may not work for you. Learn YOU before studying her.]
{Do more of…}
You do, you.
And in doing so, you will be able to capitalize on what it is that works best for you. How you best operate. Honoring your energetic output capacity. Studying the manual to YOUR own being.
I will leave you with this marvelous quote from Do Less and encourage you that in the act of doing less, you are doing more favors for your best and highest good:
“The world doesn’t need you to be busy, the world needs you here and it’s enough.”
{Sources: Do Less by Kate Northrup}