Self-care Or Self-sabotage? How To Be Peacefully Productive

(I just want to point out that I wrote the majority of this article on a server pad at work. Turns out that some ideas, a pen, and a slow Monday night makes the perfect brew for a blog post.)

I’ve always had a go-with-the-flow, laid-back, “chill by the beach” kind of vibe.

That was until about four or five years ago.

Without giving too much away, I was given the mental equivalent of an ice bath. Shocking painful, and unpleasant as it was, I was confronted with a series of ugly truths: I was lazy, I was fairly overweight, and directionless.

Ouch.

I was resting comfortably on the wrong side of the pendulum. So what did I do? I gave myself a long hard look in the mirror, pulled up those bootstraps, and swung in a Tarzan-like fashion all the way to the other side. I David Goggins and Jocko Willink’d my way through life. I lost 50 pounds. I got some mentors and embraced them. I found direction. It was exhilarating, romantic even.

But I also became insufferable to the people around me (lol). There’s something about sort of getting your shit together that makes you think you’ve solved all of the great mysteries of life, and there’s an arrogance that comes with that. I traded the complexity of emotion and circumstances for a simple recipe of discipline and choice.

But in doing that, productivity became my idol. I was always in a hurry, always guilty about not doing enough. 

I couldn’t relax. And truthfully, even though discipline was my religion, I was still half-assing my way through a lot of stuff. Now, instead of just being lazy, I was lazy and anxious, with guilt-fueled bursts of energy here and there.

And even though I got some great stuff accomplished: getting healthy, finding direction, and learning how to do things even though I didn’t feel like doing them, my obsession with productivity cost me my peace.

Fast forward to today, I prioritize peace much more. I still try to have discipline because I want to live a good, honorable life, look out for the future Alannah, and trust that I’ll get what I need to get done, done. But holding that tension between not feeling guilty and miserable all the time and not falling into a pit of self-indulgence is….tricky. 

Like, when exactly are we supposed to do what? When do we “deserve” self-care and when do we need to turn on that ruthless discipline button to get shit done?

I read one interpretation of this distinction earlier this week in a Newsletter (shout out to six-figure freelancer Amy Suto): “It’s when you’re sabotaging yourself on a regular basis through procrastination that you need to turn on the discipline side of things.”

Self-sabotage for me looks like breaking promises to myself. When I put an event on my calendar that I’m excited about or I know will move me forward, and then decide to bail last minute because I’m “not feeling it.” Or when I make a goal of focusing more on personal projects–like my newsletter–and then push it off until I either send it out late (like this one, oops) or not at all.

Self-care looks like spending time with my family, friends, and loved ones, even at the cost of not being productive. It looks like quitting a job, project, or work relationship that is causing misery and stress. It looks like being okay with not crossing every single thing off my to-do list, and using my values to guide me regardless of what other people think.

See the difference?

Being at rest, taking a break, or putting something off is not inherently bad. As imperfect human beings, we cannot expect to have perfect productivity. We have to leave room for our inevitable margin of error, for stuff not getting done.

It’s a knife’s edge, really—embracing our fallibility without enabling ourselves. But productivity without peace, at least in my opinion, is not something worth having.

What are your thoughts? How do you find equilibrium between your aspirations for productivity and maintaining a joyful, peaceful existence?