Tailspin
Time to correct this lack of blog posts thing.
The pandemic has been rough on a lot of us. I'm lucky enough to have come out of it relatively unscathed. I got out of China right as shit began to hit the fan and weathered the worst of it in rural North Carolina. My primary source of income was in China, so I was forced to become a full-time freelancer pretty quickly. It's been liberating, but also very stressful.
In the process of keeping up with client work as well as finding new projects, blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside. It would be nice if my excuse was that simple. The pandemic itself certainly had a lot to do with it. A lot of my content was about travel - one of my main sources of inspiration in my design work and writing - and travel got canceled.
From there, the "Covid wall" feeling did the rest. It's hard to put into words, but by now I think most of you will recognize what I mean when I say that it felt like time was both moving glacially slow and at warp speed all at once. You had all the time in the world to do stuff by virtue of being at home, but everything still felt frozen in time. Doomscrolling ensues, and you try to forget about everything going on by streaming TV or playing video games rather than learning how to bake sourdough like responsible people.
When you start avoiding something, you stall out, lose your momentum, and go into a tailspin. You reach a point where you're unable to execute your ideas because you're afraid of failing. The longer you put off your goals, the more that fear increases. That compounding fear eventually makes it hard to pull up. How can we snap out of it and recover that positive momentum we had before?
1. Declutter your mind to regain focus.
I often find that so many responsibilities, worries, and ideas bouncing around in my head unchecked can lock up all the machinery that keeps me productive. It's unhealthy to let all of this unorganized information rattle around like some kind of volatile concoction of unstable elements. That information is important, but unless you talk about it or get it out onto paper, it remains unrefined and unhelpful. Writing always helps me, whether it's a simple list or a stream-of-consciousness journal entry. If you have a friend with similar interests, just grabbing their ear over a coffee or pint (virtually or in-person) can help you vocalize some things that your inner monologue could not.
2. Create an actionable plan.
“Just like rolling a snowball down the mountain, you gain more momentum the closer you perceive yourself to accomplishing your goal.”
Once you've condensed that nebulous cloud of raw information in your mind into something that can be used, do something with it. Journaling and venting are helpful, but just getting everything out might not be enough to escape a period of stagnation. You wrote something down, closed the journal, and forgot all about it a few weeks later. Your inner pilot is still asleep at the gearstick in our metaphorical plane. It's time to come up with solutions for the issues you uncovered in the decluttering process. This could be as simple as laying out a step-by-step plan or as intricate as setting dates for different milestones as you work toward your goals.
2.5. Don't get stuck in the planning phase.
I'm extremely susceptible to this pitfall of planning everything to the last detail, but not actually executing because I'm more comfortable in this stage. Also, be flexible with your plan. If you create some kind of looming monolith, it can be intimidating to start due to the scale. Break everything down into achievable, manageable milestones.
3. Start small and build momentum towards your goals.
If you ask me, "chunking" is not a very sexy name, but it's been a very effective strategy for achieving goals of all sizes. Even if you have a pretty big goal, for example, building a website for a new business venture, you can make it seem less intimidating by breaking it up into smaller tasks. With each task you complete, you gain a sense of progress toward the larger goal. Just like rolling a snowball down the mountain, you gain more momentum the closer you perceive yourself to accomplishing your goal. Every website needs a domain name, so start there. Even such a small step will create that feeling in your mind of "okay, this is actually happening now." Before you know it, you've finished a section, a page, and wow, the whole damn thing!
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4. Keep up with self-care and maintenance to minimize future tailspins.
Once you've pulled up out of a slump, don't forget what landed you there in the first place. Did doing too much for too long cause you to stall out? Perhaps you've been neglecting things outside of work, like diet, exercise, sleep, and mental health. All of these things play off one another and ignoring one of them can cause a chain reaction that leaves you scrambling to find your parachute. It's all about balance - recognize that these are important, but don't obsess over any one of them. Keep up with sensible maintenance, but also enjoy life!
We all have up and down cycles.
Don't buy into the "hustle porn" - the glorification of working oneself to death - that litters your social feeds. We all have up and down cycles of productivity. Burning yourself out is not good for your physical or mental health and it's not a sustainable productivity strategy. Don't feel guilty for taking a break, but also learn to recognize when taking a break turns into avoidance, just like it did for me with posting regular blog posts! ◉
Written by Seth Barham
