Grace Be With You (and also with Moms)
Productivity Through a Mother's Lens
I used to be efficient and effective. Give me a task and I could cross that bad-boy off the list faster than anyone in the room. Give me a problem to solve - I could give you 20 solutions before you finished your thought. I elevated my way through the ranks of a successful engineering firm until I became their Director of Administration. With no experience, by the way, just the determination to be more than I was the day before.
And then we had a baby. And everything I thought I was, was gone. There was no moment before or after, no sliding glass door, but a sifting of the sand. And everything that made me hyper-efficient, hyper-effective, and just plain ol’ hyper, fell away.
Because it was a gradual process, I didn’t really understand what was happening at first. I thought I should still be able to “do” as much as I did before - after all, babies mostly sleep, right? But I would get to the end of the day and just feel shitty about how little I’d accomplished.
Okay, I kept a baby alive, but big deal - you should have seen my to-do list.
So I would carry everything that hadn’t been crossed off over to the next day’s list. Feeling the weight of each unfinished task as I manually wrote out what a failure I clearly was (this was before I discovered Trello - a topic for another time).
My Daily Routine:
Make the list
Feed the baby
Keep the baby alive
Look at the list
Feed the baby
Keep the baby alive
Feel resentment towards the list
Feel resentment towards the baby
Feel like the worst mother on the planet
Repeat
It soon became apparent that this was going to be neither sustainable nor healthy, and things had to change. We had a couple of options: hire a nanny to help (too expensive), stop giving myself so much “work” to do and just focus on the baby (not likely, that shit runs deep), or redefine what it means to be productive.
So we called up Merriam-Webster and put in our request - to include the general category of “moms” under the meaning of productivity so that we can all stop feeling terrible about how little we accomplish in a day.
Not really, though I might, now that I’ve written this. No, instead I did something even weirder. I started logging every little thing I did in a day. Every feeding, every diaper change, every floor sweep, nap, snack, walk around the house, bathroom clean, online shopping binge, blog read…I tracked it all, obsessively so. Which brought about a different kind of mania perhaps, but it shifted me in the other direction, which is what I needed.
Over time I found a happy medium. As my daughter grew, so did my capacity to be gracious with myself, especially on the days that felt less “productive”. As she gained new skills (crawling, walking, talking - talk about productive, try being a baby!), I gained a new perspective on how to show up in the world. And day by day, we found our rhythm. Three-plus years in and we’re still (relatively) efficient in our way.
And then last week I felt that old flame of non-productive guilt rise up. I took the week off to be with my sis, to build some core memories for all of our children, and to spend some much needed sister reconnection time together.
For the most part, I was able to be there with everyone. To release the to-do’s and the emails and the notifications. I loved being in the forest with our crew - the only stimulation was our kiddos having the best time at the lake (and the buzzing of the wasps trying to steal their food…less ideal). But these sneaky little moments would creep in, whispering “You should be working.” Or “why aren’t you doing more right now? If you have time to sit down, you have time to send an email.”
And then my more grounded & expanded self (let’s call her Grace) said, “Nah, I’m-a-stay right here. This, right here, is enough.”
Still productive, it just means something different now.
sending big love and deep breaths, abby
P.S. If the feeling that you’re not doing enough is clouding your reality, invitation to close down your eyes and take 3 deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. There - you just did more than most of the mouth breathers out there (no shade on mouth breathers).
P.P.S. Soon I’ll start sharing some mini breath meditations you can do on the spot to support these moments…stay tuned.