The “I’m not doing enough” crisis
A client came to me last week describing having a constant feeling of urgency to do more, try more, live more. “Write that book, bulk up, learn how to make sourdough, build the kids a treehouse, I should be doing more but never do it.”
I asked him how that makes him feel, and his answer, “not good enough”.
Despite his accomplishments at work, training for an ironman, and caring for his two kids, he had this nagging voice in his head telling him he should be doing more.
This client’s anxiety around what he should be doing is not isolated, and in fact I’m seeing more and more clients, already under a weight of pressure at work, at home, within themselves, having this sense that they’re not living life, or doing as much as they should be.
My Client was a self-professed perfectionist, which was evidently coming into play here. But there was more to it – external influence that was getting in the way. Perhaps we can make sense of what’s going here when we look at the ‘always on’ world we live in today. Where we have so much choice that it becomes overwhelming, Where social media tells us what everyone else is doing only to mirror back to us what we are not. What we lack.
It doesn’t help that we live in a growing Attention Economy, a term coined by psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon. Life is vastly different to what it was to our ancestors, largely because of the rise of the digital age. We are caught in a web of to do’s, obligations, demands, alerts and reminders which can result in feeling like we’re in a constant cycle of fight or flight, unable to decipher what is and is not a priority, constantly adding more weight to our load.
For many of us, we’ve become so bogged down by the constant noise, responsibilities, pressure to make enough money to survive that we’ve lost sight of ourselves. We’re barely keeping a float and rarely doing the things that make us feel fulfilled, energized, centered.
Picture this. You’re writing a report and your phone pings:
“Sophie’s been sick at school – can you pick her up?” While you’re midway through responding to your wife -
(Ping) “There’s a problem in the US office can you jump on a call with the team?”
(ping) “Text from Ringo, your parking session is about to expire”
(ping) “TOM! Are you coming to get Sophie?”
(ping) “Hi T, drinks after work?”
(ping).
You get the point.
Gloria Mark, a psychologist, and researcher at the university of California, Irvine, has spent years studying the impact of distraction. In one of her studies, she found that if you’re interrupted mid-task—whether by a text, a quick check of the football score, a colleague asking for help, or a meeting notification—it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus. Read that again. By switching your attention (Context switching) you’re becoming less efficient. Your performance is being diluted.
And all those incomplete, interrupted tasks you’ve diverted from? Like fireworks in the sky they explode and shoot around in and out of your mind, reminding you of what you’ve not done, need to do, must do.
It’s no wonder we feel overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious. We’re constantly reminded of the things we could and should be doing via social media, and simultaneously, the things that we are doing are incomplete, unresolved and create on-going pressure.
You aren’t alone if you frequently have intentions of starting something new - learning how to make sourdough, starting to train for a marathon, or writing the bones of a new crime book, yet simply don’t have the brain power or energy to do those things - even though you know it’ll make you feel good.
HOW CAN I SORT IT OUT?
I think part of the issue is we’re no longer focusing in on what’s important to us, our values, what is meaningful to us. Instead, we’re looking outward to what everyone else is doing, which is facilitating that feeling of not being good enough and not doing enough.
There’s always going to be more we could do, and experience, and be part of, but what’s important is focusing on the bits that matter to you.
TAKE STOCK
Ask yourself the following:
What’s important to me about the way I live my life? (values)
Who and what matters to me? (priorities)
What do I need in any given week, to feel ok ie. exercise, time with friends, time with my partner without interruption (wellbeing)
What would I like to do that I haven’t yet done? (new things / potential fulfilment)
Then we build. Put the way you want to live your life front and centre, before the noise and distraction of every day inevitably gets in the way:
Your values – look at what you’ve written and compare it to how things currently look in your life. What needs to change? How do you go about that? What’s the first step?
Your priorities - How are you weaving these into every day, week or month?
How are you protecting your time so that you can focus in on who and what matters before you consider all other to do’s?
Schedule them in as a baseline in your schedule.
Your wellbeing – you now know what you need in a week in order to feel ok. As with your priorities, schedule what you need into your week. Fuel your body and your mind by prioritising you and things that make you the best version of yourself.
New experiences – create that bucket list of things you would like to try or do, this month, this year, in your life, whatever works for you. Then go through the list and number each out of 0-10 in terms of how much you want to do it. Then pick a couple that have scored high – that you really want to do -and ask yourself: How am I going to make this happen? What are the realistic steps to get there? Where do I start?
Then start.
FOCUS
If Gloria Mark’s study hit a nerve, then it may be time to set some firm boundaries in order to protect your attention.
For example, if you know that you work best in the morning, minimise distraction at that time. This can easily be achieved by silencing any potential distraction as best you can. Turn off notifications, your phone, and your colleagues.
With the latter, it’s about communicating your needs. Communicate to those that need to know - “I work best 8-10am so no meetings are to go in my diary for that time.”
Remove yourself from the distraction – for example, for two mornings a week, start working from a space where you can fully immerse yourself in whatever task you need to do.
Set strict periods where you allow yourself to mindlessly scroll / be on your phone - We all do it, wasting our evenings, and forgetting to look up. It’s become an unconscious habit for us humans to pick up the phone when there’s a space or gap in time, and research points to the fact that doing so negatively impacts how we feel about ourselves, our energy, our mood. So give yourself permission to do it if you want to, but have a strict time-limit around your usage.
The above sounds easy, but it’s not. It takes discipline and motivation. But as an incentive, next time you turn to your phone when you’re in the middle of playing with the kids, or you’re on a peaceful walk and reach for your phone, ask yourself, by doing this, what am I not doing? What am I missing? How is this serving me? Then decide where to focus attention.
We can’t always get it right, and we’ll no doubt slip back to endless scrolling or inviting distractions when we know it’s not helpful. And that’s ok. All you can do is catch yourself and start again.
The moral of this story? Maybe give yourself a break. The way you are feeling is not necessarily because of you, it’s due to the way things are in the world at the moment. Time to take control.