Rethinking Productivity, Rest, and the Way I Work
Dear Kindred Spirit,
A few days ago I felt focused, energized, and productive. I had a couple days of writing, walking, and doing all the things I love to do. And then I crashed. I woke up so tired. I didn’t have energy to do anything. It was hard to just keep my eyes open.
The story I told myself about that crash was that I had stalled. Once again, I’d made a little progress on my work, and now I was moving backwards. Too tired to write, do my weight lifting routine, or even crochet the blanket I’d been working on for months.
How was it that the day before I felt so good and in my flow, and then suddenly I was drained and blocked?
I felt like I’d failed.
Kindred Spirit, this is a little peek into my relationship with time, productivity, and rest. I live in a body with unpredictable energy cycles. Sometimes I wake up ready to get to work and do THINGS. Other days I wake up and nothing is going to happen that day.
This has been my energy cycle for my whole life. I’ve never been able to uphold the traditional productivity goals of a 9 - 5 job, where you work consistently from Monday to Friday, pushing through to the weekend.
When I worked as a database manager in a high-stress office with traditional hours, there would be days I got so much done. And other days, I would come into work and my energy would be really low. I was physically present, but I would get hardly anything done. Over the course of a couple weeks, I could accomplish my tasks, but not in the consistent way that was expected of me.
Even though this has been true for the past 46 years and throughout all my varied vocations, I still struggle with trusting it. I’m constantly thinking of ways to change the way I work. This is how ingrained the cultural messaging around productivity is.
This messaging can be extremely hard to let go of, because it comes down to primal fears around success and failure.
The story goes like this—if I produce according to the cultural standard, I’m succeeding. If I create according to my own unique flow, I’m failing.
The mission of the Sunday Dispatch is to help you create more joy in your life—and that begins with me creating more joy in my own. So this week, my question is: how can I create more joy around my natural energy cycles?
If I were to coach myself on this, here is what I would say. I need to stop fighting my body and my natural rhythms, and I need to let myself do my thing—because even though the cultural messaging says it’s wrong, actually, this flow works for me.
When I change the lens on my natural rhythms from failure to success, here is what I see.
I’m a creative person who loves to do lots of projects at once. I always have a few writing projects going, multiple personal goals, and a stack of five or six books I’m reading. This is what keeps me interested, alive, and vibrant. (If you know the enneagram, you might be thinking… ah, she’s a 7.)
And at the same time, my life force energy needs real rest in between all that doing.
So if I imagine a true ideal rhythm for myself, not based on the traditional work week, it looks like this: a couple or so days of focused energy on all the things. Getting deeply interested in whatever I’m working on. Pouring my heart into it. Then a day or so of rest. Chill out. Read a cozy mystery. Play a video game. Breathe. Fully reset—without spending the day worrying that I’m failing at life.
After that, when my energy is full again—boom—I’m right back into it.
Because the truth I keep missing is this—my body is going to do its natural rhythm whether I like it or not, so why not trust that my body is doing the right thing for itself? How joyful would that be?
When I embrace resting every couple of days, I stay in my natural creative flow. The things I create feel more like me. I write more in my voice, and it’s more satisfying to bring my work into the world.
When I try to override my natural need for rest, everything tightens. My creativity feels forced. And that’s not the kind of writing I want to do. I want to write from a place that feels open and alive.
The real shift isn’t about fixing how I do things. It’s about trusting myself.
At the beginning of this article, when I asked, “How can I create more joy around my natural energy cycles?” I could have answered from a very different place—a place of hustle. Set an alarm. Wake up earlier. Be more disciplined. Push through.
That’s usually the answer our culture offers. We’re taught to look for ways to override ourselves.
But I’m not going to create more joy in my life by overriding my true nature. It’s about working with it. Letting it be what it is, and releasing the story that something is wrong with it.
Because nothing has gone wrong. It’s gone right.
I’ll leave you with this.
Where in your life are you trying to fix something that might actually be working?
What would change if, instead of pushing against it, you learned how to trust it?
—Emma
Hi, I’m Emma Basu. I’m a writer, tarot card reader, and book lover. My soul’s work is to help you find clarity amongst the chaos, meaning in the mundane, and purpose in your life’s winding journey.
Disclaimer: This blog is a resource guide for educational and informational purposes only and should not take the place of hiring a life coach, a therapist, or of seeking medical attention. No information on this blog creates a coach-client relationship between us. You are fully responsible for the decisions and actions you take in regard to your life and affairs.