Right now I am tidying my work as I want to take a few weeks off in August to re-charge and be ready for a very busy few months up to the end of the year.
This is making me feel miserable. I am not my usual up-beat and positive self, so I need to apply some neuroscience and “hack my brain” to feel better.
Acting against type makes us miserable
The reason I feel so down and demotivated is because I am acting against my preferences. I know myself well enough to recognise that I am great at starting ideas, and that I feel excited and energised when I am having new thoughts and innovating.
It is the back end of the work where I struggle to maintain my enthusiasm. Those last few days or weeks where everything is about detailed reviews, confirming that every step has been taken, everything has been documented and explained to others is not my passion.
Benefits of finishing what we started
I don’t like getting everything finished, however, that’s exactly what I need to be able to completely forget about work and properly relax on holiday. I know how checking emails can instantly create anxiety and knowing that something is not quite finished can be a small but insistent negative voice in my head.
I also know that even simple issues are so much harder to cope with when we are on holiday – we don’t have our laptops and all the information we need to solve the problem, lots of other people are out of the office at the same time, everything is more difficult, slower to resolve and before we know it, one of our valuable days off has become a full work day.
Re-framing how I feel
Thinking about these negatives can motivate me to get everything finished, but I find that they just make me feel miserable. Instead, I focus on the positive feelings of completing the tasks, getting confirmation from others they have what they need and agreeing with my colleagues that there is nothing outstanding that they need from me.
To achieve this I need to visualise these handovers:
and to feel I can completely relax because I know that everything was handed over properly and accepted by others so to feel positive it’s that visualisation that I want to focus on I want to think about how people will feel they know what I’ve given them that they’ve acceptive what I’ve done and I that’s the bit when I go I know that’s really what we call in agile done done not just done but it’s been accepted
Have a look at previous articles in this series for more inspiration.
