Five Practices to Stay Grounded During a Busy Season

Spiced Red Lentil Soup

Soups are great healthful meals that offer nutrition – and leftovers!
(Photo by Stephanie Guimond, Spiced Red Lentil Soup recipe at OhSheGlows.com.)

I’m a big advocate of creating intentional holidays. Most years, come December, I choose to practice what I dub “slow holidays” (think Slow Food meets Simple Living) – or at least I try to.

For many creative business owners, November and December are the busiest months of the year; taking it slow may not be the most financially viable option. In these cases, there are still great practices that can help make the season manageable, and hopefully even enjoyable!

These five practices have helped me stay grounded through busy times in the past. If you’re working a tight, full schedule during the next few weeks, they may come in handy for you, too.

Get Sleep

Feeling rested does wonders for clarity and focus, not to mention it’s great for the immune system. Try to get to bed early, and give yourself a bit of time to transition from high-functioning wake to sweet slumber at the end of each day. You’ll feel refreshed and ready for work bright and early the next day. And don’t forget the all-mighty power nap! Sometimes that’s all it takes to regroup; just be careful it’s not procrastination in its oft sly disguise.

Drink Water

I confess, my go-to drink when I want to be productive often involves caffeine, but when I’m feeling really sluggish it’s often because I’ve neglected my intake of good old H20. Just like sleep, water can do wonders for energy and mental clarity. Have a glass sitting on your desk for easy sipping. Make it a game and match each cup of coffee with one glass of water.

Eat Healthful Food

Eat decent, as healthful as possible meals. On some days it may mean two toasts with vegetables and hummus for dinner and on others, it might mean ordering a roasted chicken meal with a side salad or sweet potato fries. Fruit, nuts and pre-made salads are quick, healthful snack options. It’s all about keeping it simple and as healthy as possible without too much pressure for perfection.

Give Yourself Clean Breaks

“Sometimes the most urgent thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.”

~ Ashleigh Brilliant

We all need time off, especially when things are hectic. Whether it’s for a full day or part thereof, break free from your work and find something fun to do. Have lunch with a friend, make art, take in a hike, enjoy live music, or curl up with a book. Give yourself a reboot & release.

Simplify Where You Can

Order takeout, buy healthful pre-made meals, hire someone to clean the house, ask family members to pitch in a little bit extra, or just let go of unrealistic expectations. Figure out where you could temporarily simplify things for the busy season, and do it. You can always go back to your usual M.O. afterward.

How do you cope with your busy season?

Do you temporarily shift some of your habits to meet the holiday rush? Are there any practices you keep sacred, that help you stay grounded?

What’s your intention for the holidays?

Hi there! It’s Laura. I’ve been writing here at Scoutie Girl for about 9 months, and I’m excited to be bringing some videos over here as well!

I’m all about doing things with intention and consciousness. Since the holidays are upon us, I thought I’d invite you to join me in setting an intention for the season. Nothing fancy, nothing mystical. Just a little trick that helps keep my head and my heart where I want it.

In the comments, tell us your intention for the holidays.

Gathering light,

push through? or pause? you decide

Officially, Thanksgiving is over. The dishes have been done. The house cleaned up. And if you are someone who runs your own business making and selling a service or products, you have been gearing up for one of the busiest times of your year.

Just when the light is less bright, and the evenings are chilly and cold, just when squirrels and birds are going to bed at 5pm and some of the much bigger animals further north are settling in for their long winter’s nap, you are perhaps putting in longer than even usual hours, maintaining your online shop, working on your marketing plan, rewriting copy, creating work and photographing that work. You might also be working art fairs and craft shows, and getting the word out about your work in person.

Any way you look at it, you are busy.

I had my Thanksgiving schedule all figured out a week or so ago. I had blocks of time marked out on my calendar and I was ready with what I felt was a good balance of work, family, friends, and creating. {If this were a movie, I’d be cueing up some music in a minor key, and having the camera look down long mysterious hallways, alerting you all to what might be coming, but hopefully not giving it all away.}

So, Wednesday night I noticed that the water wasn’t as hot as it usually is. I thought: it’s on a timer, and it’s late, and it’s cold out. Thursday morning my husband went to play in the annual Turkey Bowl with high school friends, and I went in to my studio to paint. Lovely Thanksgiving morn. On schedule. Relaxed.

Three or four hours later the husband is back. Dirty. Sweaty. Muddy. Ready for a shower. And {cue the music} the water is barely luke warm. Pilot light blown out we think, but no time to deal with it, as we are due to meet his family for Thanksgiving dinner. Still on schedule, though the sureness I felt in my weekend schedule has skipped a few beats.

Dinner is had, we return home, and I am making tea, and realise, that the water is no longer luke warm. It is freezing. OK. We’ll deal with that in the morning. Morning arrives, we try to get the pilot light re-lit, and nothing. We call some people to ask advice. Still nothing. We call our plumber. Well, he’s on holiday, and a recorded message tells us that he will return on Monday. So my weekend schedule has officially crashed and burned.

I call PG&E to see if someone can come out. Yeah, no. It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving, and most of their crews are home with their families. So they will only send someone out if it’s our heat that’s gone out or there’s an emergency, like a power line has come down. So we call some more plumbers, and actually find someone who is working. He comes out to look at the water heater. It’s now 3pm.

This whole time, pretty much the whole day Friday, I have had this conversation running non-stop in my head: You have to finish those little paintings and get them out in the mail today. You should be working on stuff for the art fair next weekend. You need to finish that project for a client before Monday. You need to re-list the stuff that’s sold in the shop. To which I reply {all in my head of course}, I know! So shut up already.

Friday, now later afternoon. It’s starting to get dark. I haven’t finished the paintings that need to go out in the mail. The plumber has determined that both water heaters are dead. In fact one of them has probably been dead for quite some time. He points out some scorch marks on the lower edge of the pilot compartment and says that it’s probably a good thing it died, since it was burning outside the heater. I try not to think about that too much. And he is on the phone to his “guy” trying to track down a new water heater on the Friday after Thanksgiving at 4:47 pm.

Yeah. We do have a lucky star hanging above us most of the time, but apparently not when it comes to water heaters. And definitely not when we’re combining two dead water heaters, a long holiday weekend, and a huge long list of things that capital MUST be done.

I will confess. I fretted. The plumber left, he said he’d be back Saturday morning, and he’d get it all sorted out, and I went back to my studio to assess what I hadn’t done, and I fretted some more.

OK, I’ll just point out that here’s where I made it all make sense for me.

I stopped.

In years past I might not have made this move. I might have kept pushing through. I might have created a lot of busy activity to make myself feel like something was getting done. But this time, I had the good sense {after an hour or so of fretting and countless hours of listening to the task-mistress voice inside my head} to let it all go.

So the paintings might be a day late getting to the gallery. So I might not have as much stuff for the art fair as I originally wanted. So I might have to call my client and let her know that my comps would be a few days late. But seriously, the main thing was I hadn’t had a shower on this chilly, damp gray day after Thanksgiving, and I really needed one.

Fretting can work up a sweat.

So I stopped and called a friend who lives nearby and asked if we could come over and shower. It turned out to be the best thing I could have done for my head space, and for my fretting. My husband and I took showers {oh, hot water, how I love thee} and hung out with our friend whose wife was away back east for the holiday. He told us that this was the most perfect thing that could have happened. He was just starting to feel a little holiday lonely and then there we were on his door step. We drank some wine. We danced in his living room. We laughed till my stomach hurt. And my inner task-mistress just shut the hell up.

Sometimes working on our businesses means pushing through the long hours and solving endless problems and working till it’s time for sleep and then getting up and doing it all again the next day.

And then there are other times when you have to look at why you are pushing though a difficult situation.

Is it so that you can get to the other side of something that you’ve been trying to crack for a while? Or is it because you’ve become so accustomed to pushing through that you just do it without thinking about your ultimate destination or the outcome? And the other important angle to look at is the reality assessment: Will pushing through this situation get me anywhere other than tired and irritated? Is it solvable right now, right here?

We got home at 11-ish Friday night from our friend’s house. And I painted for a couple of hours, and got the pieces finished and ready to mail. A day late, but they were ready to go for Saturday. And I felt better. I was showered. I was smiling. I went to bed with no fretful thoughts running through my head that would turn into weird dreams in the middle of the night.

I paused in my heavily scheduled weekend due to circumstances that I had absolutely no control over, and it all turned out okay. Were there things in my etsy shop that would have sold if I had re-listed them more quickly? Perhaps. Am I a little late on all the details and deadlines? A little bit, yes. Am I fretting and crabby and tired? No.

Oh, and the hot water. We still don’t have any. The plumber couldn’t get the hot water heater we wanted, so rather than settle for the less desirable one, we’re waiting till Monday, which is tomorrow as I finish writing this, and everything is truly okay. People have been very generous with their hot water, and when I finish editing this piece, I’ll be heading to another friend’s for a shower. Oh happy day.

being busy and the end of the endless summer

endless summer

These days everybody is busy, and busy can be good if it means having enough work. But what about life beyond work? That seems to be filled with busy too, as many of us are constantly connected to some form of communication device.

I have reached the point of too much. I am overwhelmed and overloaded, and it seems I am not alone.

Attending WDS in June was life changing. I came home filled with newfound energy and empowered with faith in what I am doing as an entrepreneur. This has not yet proven to be profitable, but after hearing the stories of so many that made something out of nothing to great success, I believe I can too. The downside is I felt compelled to keep on top of everything many of these people are doing. I signed on to a ridiculous number of newsletters, downloaded way too many eBooks, and got a load of new followers and friends on twitter and FB. I over loaded myself with busy work.

Now summer is near the midpoint and I am behind on my goals of branding myself and rebuilding my website by Labor Day. I am more than midway through the WCWW and am writing less than I did a month ago. My home and garden are neglected, and I have made next to no progress on getting rid of our “stuff,” another summer goal. Something has got to change.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but when I was a kid… (insert violins) summer truly seemed endless. Busy was not in my vocabulary, and most of my communicating happened face to face. Long lazy afternoons were spent laying in the grass talking about nothing and laughing at everything. It was the polar opposite of my life now. It is time to find the balance.

It is interesting that my three links today are people I met or saw at WDS.

Last week Jonathan Mead at Illuminated Mind wrote When You Need to Stop Listening, which concerns information overload. Jonathan is one of the people I was aware of but did not follow till June. I like his style and mind.

Sometimes we think we need to listen to other people to find out the best way.

It’s easy to feel that we need to learn better strategies, do more exercises and read more blog posts before we can find the best course of action. Doing this gets us caught in a doom spiral of endless preparation.

“A doom spiral of endless preparation.” Yes, I do believe I signed up for that. I have more books and eBooks on business, creativity, and motivation etc. to keep me busy for the next year and yet I still search. Back in May I wrote a sort of life manifesto where I stated the things I know for sure. I said,

Everything you really need to know is inside you if you are willing to look.

Hmm, it looks like I need to take my own advice.

Also last week, Jonathan Fields, who was the closing speaker at WDS, wrote about busyness and lack of productivity.

Great work, brilliant ideas, extraordinary art requires space.

Time away. Room to process, synthesize, allow connections between seemingly disparate parts to effervesce out of the ether of the mind.

Genius is the offspring of the in-between.

But, increasingly, technology is removing the in-between.

We don’t just walk in contemplation, we walk, talk and type.

We don’t just drive, we drive, talk and every time we stop the car, we check, tap and reply. Red lights, the bain of a life-long quest to get “there,” have now become a sought after opportunity to catch up on any communication that may’ve arrived since the last red-light…5 blocks ago.

But when we fill in all the organic in-betweens with texting, e-mailing, DMing and updating, we unintentionally kill the a critical step in the ideation process—percolation and contemplation—and along with it go creativity, innovation and despite your opposite intention, productivity.

So, why do we do it?

Filling in the in-between, we say, lets us get so much more done. Wrong.

Hyperconnectivity gives us the perception of getting more done, it makes us feel like we’re doing more, because we’re using every free moment of every waking hour.

There is often a huge chasm between being busy and being productive.

Well I can certainly attest to this. I could be the poster child. The question becomes what to do about it.

I recommend reading Jonathan’s post for some interesting reasons why this happens and some great comments. Yes, more reading, but about doing less!

Tammy Stroebel of Rowdy Kittens is taking a digital sabbatical this month and she wrote a post on the why and how. I have long admired Tammy’s straight forward approach to simple living. The why is mostly about getting a book written and knowing she needs the downtime to make it happen. She has a few suggestions on how.

There are a few things I’ve done to prepare for my month off:

- Gathered my tools. A portion of my book includes academic research and that has already been saved to my hard-drive. So I shouldn’t have to open my browser. In addition, I’ve made a list of the books I want to read during July.

As far as writing tools go, I’ll be journaling, using the OmmWriter, and Word. If you’re thinking about unplugging for any length of time, make a list of the resources you’ll need. If you plan in advance, you won’t have to log-on.

- Made it hard to be online. My plan is to do most of my writing in the park or in Internet free coffee shops. If I’m at home, I’ll turn off my wireless connection. In addition, I deleted all of my social networking applications from my iPod Touch as well as my e-mail account.

Also, I installed Freedom. It’s a “simple productivity application that locks you away from the internet on Mac or Windows computers for up to eight hours at a time.”

Likewise, returning to Jonathan Mead’s post, he suggests unplugging.

The best guidance you can get is from yourself. Everything you need is inside you. The best map is the one you create as you walk your path.

If you’re struggling with this my suggestion is to go on an information diet. Don’t read any blogs, books, ebooks or take in any inputs for a few weeks (or months, if you’re bold). Spend some time reflecting and meditating on what you want your life to be about.

And perhaps, more importantly, allow yourself to really believe that this is possible. You can’t get permission or confidence by looking at the notes or approval of others. Faith comes from deeply trusting yourself.

If you’re struggling with this, I invite you to unplug from all the inputs for a while and see what’s inside of you.

I do believe I have what I need, and that I know how to move forward. I have a plan and a support system. I only need to allow the time and space to process and create. Seems so simple?

This week I am taking some time off. Just one week. I will write one post on my blog Monday and then focus on my writing and website till Wednesday when we go to the beach for a few days. There I will be writing, on paper, with a pen, and may even mail some letters! There will most definitely be plenty of sitting, walking, and listening to myself on the beach.

My Jonathan Mead’s question for you: Have you ever struggled with information overload? What did you do about it?

lori’s fear is my guilt

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Lori May (follow her on twitter, @lmayinteriors) wrote to me this week in response to my post on the seduction of Busyness. I think her feelings are shared by many of you, so I asked if I could reproduce her words & my response.

Lori is having difficulty starting her business. She’s trying to move forward but Busyness gets in the way. But Busyness isn’t the underlying problem, it’s the two sets of fears that create her need for constant doing & participation:

1) I am actually afraid of this new business and its possible success. What would I do then? How would I handle the work load? Who would volunteer at my girls’ school? What would people think if it seemed like I enjoyed working more than mothering?! (I am secretly afraid that I might!)

2) I have been a stay at home mom for 3 1/2 years. It really wasn’t by choice, but I don’t regret it. In this time, though, it seems that my identity has developed into the busier I am, the better mom I am. When in actuality I have less time for my husband and my children because of my busyness. Now that I am beginning to understand this, I am terrified of changing. I am the room mom, the volunteer, the holiday market chairperson. How do I stop doing all of these things to start my dream business?

Lori’s fears are my guilt.

I struggle everyday with the guilt of no longer being a full-time mom. I struggle with that fact that I love working and do it a lot. I feel guilt about being successful when so many talented people have not found their own success.

I was a full-time mom. Lola was my life. I had the opportunity few others have. Who was I to “give up” on that? Who was I to spend less time with her? Who was I to make the choice not to be a full time mom anymore?

But, intellectually, I know that I’ve provided something very different, and equally valid, for all three of us. For myself, I’ve provided the opportunity to do exactly what I have always wanted to do. For my husband, I’ve provided a much needed rest and an opportunity to make his own “something.”

And for my daughter, I’m providing a quite unusual example of entrepreneurship & the power of a determined woman. I’m showing her that art can pay. That doing what you love is possible & profitable.

I put on a good show here. I love to talk about the power of shedding your fears & moving past your personal barriers. And I’m not going to stop. But at the same time, I struggle with my own demons, fears, and sense of guilt.

In the end, I can either keep working on my life’s work or I can succumb to those feelings. At this point, my decision is fairly easy. But it may not be for you. And your life’s work may not be starting a business. Your life’s work may be raising a family or teaching art or being a scientist. We all have fears that surround pursuing our own life’s work of art. We all have guilt.

We’re all struggling with something. You’re not alone. I’m not alone. And together we can move forward.