When is an hour not an hour?
How to fuel, rest and process heavy emotional weather
Recently I was having a philosophical conversation with my 5-year-old granddaughter about time. I was trying to explain to her why time can feel like it’s moving quickly when you’re doing something fun, and feel like it’s moving slowly when you’re experiencing something unpleasant.
Considering that she is still learning how to tell time and only recently moved away from the “how many sleeps” metric, it was perhaps a bit of a conversational overreach.
How we measure time has been on my mind. For many years, there has been an argument in the ad industry about how to best charge clients for work, with many advocating that we charge for the value of the ideas and work. Charging for intellectual property makes lots of sense in theory, but it is harder to execute in practice. I still use a billable hour basis for my work, because I find it simpler to predict and manage scope against hours with clients.
The problem isn’t with how I bill; it’s with how I think. In my mind, I consider a billable hour to be a billable hour, and will look at my personal and professional resource management against how many hours I work in a particular period of time and not the type of work I am doing.
Which is kind of like preparing for a one hour walk around the lake the same way you would prepare for a one hour run up a mountain. Both take one hour, but the run is going to burn more energy, require more calories, hydration and recovery. Add in factors like the weather – heat, cold, rain – and those variables increase.
Maybe you’re having an internal eye roll at the obviousness of this. But I find myself in a self-care deficit because I am not preparing for or recovering from the different kinds of hours I am spending, and I’m not alone in this.
I’ve written before about our allostatic load, the psychological and emotional burden we carry at any particular time. I write about it because I am not good at accurately assessing the allostatic load I am carrying. Which can leave me wondering why I am so depleted after I just ran up a metaphorical mountain in a heat wave with no water and bad shoes.
I do many things in a day, and they are not equal in terms of how they impact my allostatic load. Correspondence, billing, the minutiae of running a business are dull, but easy. Creating content, as I am doing now, is enlivening but takes more energy. A coaching session takes lots of energy, and facilitation with a team is the most intensive work I do.
Obvious, right? But if plan my week with the assumption that each of those activities are equal, I’m going to run empty.
It’s not just the activity, it’s the weather. Many people in this country are in a storm of uncertainty, fear, and threat. Federal workers aren’t sure if they are going to be employed next week. A wide variety of workplaces are preparing for ICE raids. Trans people are under significant threat. Anyone who needs access to programs, support or healthcare funded or managed by the federal government is worried, as are the people who work for and with those programs.
That’s the storm. And for many, it’s a hurricane. Those of us that work with others – which is most of us – also feel the impact of how the people around us are reacting to their bad weather. Executive coaches, mediators, facilitators, therapists, managers, teachers, healthcare providers are all working with people who are struggling with the storms, some of them in real peril.
I’m trying to reframe my narrative away from hours spent to allostatic load. How much energy am I planning on expending on a particular task? How emotionally challenging will it be? How am I preparing? Recovering?
A few things I’ve learned while executive coaching is to give myself time before and after a coaching session, to make sure I physically fuel by eating enough (your brain burns lots of calories), and taking a moment between sessions to move my body, even if it’s just putting on some music and dancing through my living room for a few minutes. If the weather is nice, I’ll go outside. At the end of the day, I get some exercise and try not to think about work.
Like others who are in a helping and listening field, I try to be clear about boundaries. I can’t save people from the consequences of their choices. I need to make sure I’m emotionally regulated and grounded to help others. I need support to keep me grounded – in community, spiritual practice, and with other professionals who understand confidentiality and can give me general advice or feedback without needing to know any specifics.
If you, too, have friends who are attorneys or healthcare providers, I’m sure you’ve heard them talk in a general way about something that was challenging to them, without breaking confidentiality. For example, “A woman came in today who reminded me of my mother, and it was tough.” “I really struggle with the addicts who have young children because I’ve seen so many of them lose custody of their kids and what that does to those children.” I need spaces where I can have those conversations to keep myself on track, and I feel fortunate to have them.
What I still struggle with is the piece where I give myself permission to rest. To block out my calendar the day after I do a training, speaking engagement or facilitation to allow space to recover. To not chastise myself for having lower energy when the people around me in my personal or professional life are struggling with bad weather and looking for me to provide appropriate, boundaried support. I automatically extend grace and compassion to my clients who are facing heavy weather, but I don’t always do that to myself.
Because one hour is not like another, a walk around the lake in spring takes less of a toll than the run up the mountain in a heat wave. And the concept I need to work on isn’t how many sleeps between Tuesday and Sunday, but how to be realistic about what support I need to get from one point to another in a way that allows me to do my job and maintain my balance.