I learned how to cycle long distances few years ago when I was training for a charity ride that covered 170 miles over 2 days. 

One of the most powerful strategies I learned pertained to hill climbing.  Here’s what I learned.  While riding up a steep hill, don’t look at the top of the hill: it will overwhelm, frighten, and discourage you.  Stay focused on the immediate challenge: this pedal stroke, followed by the next pedal stroke, and so forth.  And notice the very local scenery: “Huh, that looks like wild Morning Glories growing there” or “Looks like gravel up ahead.”

This Hilltop Rule applies off the road as well.

When you’re working your way out of a demoralizing work backlog, stay focused on the tasks and goals for this week.  Don’t keep looking at the whole heartbraking list - ignore that hilltop - and stay focused on the immediate work at hand. 

If you’re managing a project that has 3000 moving parts and you become paralyzed every time you think about all that still lies ahead, stop thinking about all that lies ahead: think about this week’s work.  

This is not to say don’t step back regularly and survey the big picture.  You certainly want to be sure you’re going up the right hill.  You also need to revisit your time line and resource projections on a regular basis. But not every hour.  Not even every day. 

Some people need to view the hilltop regularly to get re-inspired: “It’s not about doing the (lengthy and ho-hum) calculations for this proposal, it’s about landing this contract and taking the kids to Disney World this year!”  “Yeah, the road is rough but this reasearch is making a difference in how  lymphoma is treated.”

But mostly, stick with the pedal strikes.  That’s how work gets done.   Cumulatively, the pedal strokes add up.  Miles are covered.  And every now and then there’s a downhill segment - enjoy it when you get one! 

The downhill road can be very bumpy, and the dappled sunlight makes it hard to see the potholes too far ahead.  So slow down enough to stay safe.  Keep your wits about you.  Don’t stop doing your due diligence.  You can still enjoy a downhill ride even with your brakes lightly engaged. 

• When riding up a steep hill, ignore the hilltop.
• Stay focused on the road immediately in front of you.

What it boils down to is learning to to recognize when we are running on empy, to NOTICE IT, to identify it as a valid cue, and then to do something about it.  This requires remembering that being completely fried is not a healthy state of being on any level, and it’s our responsibility to ourselves (and to all the people and projects that depend on us) to get UN-fried.  To replenish, restore, recharge, renew . . . so that we can once again live our best life, which includes doing good work, having good relationships, and experiencing some level of happiness and well-being.

“Time off” doesn’t have to be a luxurious 8 days completely out of the office with no checking email, like I took the last week of June.  Time off can be dinner with a friend, reading a novel over the course of a month, or stepping away from your work for a moment to feel the ground under your feet and take a couple of deep breaths. 

I’m currently in the midst of a growth-and-learning episode with this dynamic, learning it at the next level.  I passed Time Off the Treadmill 303 some time ago, but this is Time off the Treadmill 400, and it’s challenging.  I’ve apparently been running on empty.  I only know this because I am CRAVING more time off, even after taking some very high quality time off last month. 

This is unusual for me.  I’m usually a cheap date when it comes to taking time off.  I can’t remember ever wanting as much time off as I have this summer.  I am choosing to trust that this is a real and valid need, and I am allowing myself much more time off than usual.

My oldest behavior, from years ago, was to respond to wanting time off by berating myself for being so unmotivated, grabbing myself by the collar, and saying to myself with authority, “Get back to work.”  And I did.  (Though I came to see, ultimately, that in that state, my work was inefficient and uninspired.)

My newer behavior illustrates some of what I’ve learned (over oh-so-many iterations):
    a. to notice without judgement my experience of desiring time off
    b. to consider it valid
    c. to investigate how soon I can responsibly take some time off,  and do it 

So I’m taking another week off in August. My business is generally quieter in the summer months than during the year because there’s less training and keynoting.  In past summers I’ve used this “quiet time” to do more writing, catch up on back office work, and develop marketing plans for the coming year.  I’m not going there now.  I’m just allowing myself the time off the track. 

While taking this much time off is out of my comfort zone, it has felt so compellingly right that I am choosing to have no doubts about it.  I have questions, such as when will I catch up on all this back office work?  I allow myself to tolerate having no answer for that.  My inner “Driven Woman” is hungrily, greedily, hopefully wondering if this “fallow” period will give rise to a new book.  I’ve learned to just let her do her thing but not let her dominate the conversation. 

I recognize that as a self-employed person I can take time off more easily than an employed person, but then again there are costs to it, such as not getting paid for vacation days.  So please don’t use my self-employed status as a way to disregard what I’m saying here: “Well sure, SHE can take time off because she works for herself, but I can’t just do that, so I’m blowing off everything she says because her situation is just so totally different from mine.”

There is always a way to take some time off, whether it’s a day or an hour or a minute.  So if you too are craving some time off, find a way to take some!

Lower a standard, re-negotiate an agreement, take a vacation day or a vacation, get some help with a project so you can create more open space for yourself, eliminate some non-priority items from your master list — whatever it take, get what you need. 

If you don’t need time out right now, remember this for when you do.  And enjoy your current state of not having this need!

Here is a simple summary of what I’ve been saying.  I’m calling it The Fallow Law:

The Fallow Law:

• Being completely fried is not a healthy state.

• Like letting a field go fallow regularly to keep it fertile and healthy, you have to give yourself time off in order to stay creatively fertile and emotionally healthy, both of which are precursors to living your best life.

I hope you will use it to support yourself in getting un-fried when you need to. 

If you find that you consistently do not replenish, restore, recharge, or renew . . . perhaps a short round of coaching is in order.  It’s possible that what’s called for are bigger structural changes than you have been willing to look at until now.  It’s also possible that more regular time off the track is all that you need.  Whatever it is that keeps you from getting what you need, I encourage you to take a stand for yourself and get some help.

I had a very rich experience recently.  I was visiting my then-8-week-old grandson at his home in Philadelphia.  I had almost two whole weekdays (just the days, not the evenings) as his sole caretaker.   It was a gift to have this much time with him. 

For me, much about this experience was remarkable.  First, I had cleared my plate completely and was able to be undivided in my attention to him.  My clients knew I was checking email and phone only in the evening, and I was otherwise on vacation from my professional life.  I had no meals to prepare, no errands to run, no one really expecting anything from me.  Life was very simple: it was just about the baby.  And there was no rush.

When my own children were little, even when I was working part-time, even when I knew enough with my second baby to take some maternity leave, there were always competing demands for my attention: my work, the house, meals, my husband, the other child, etc.  

Spending this time with my grandbaby, I had no competing demands, and there was no need to be in a hurry.

What a joyful experience — to be fully present, in the present, with this new little guy.   Granted, being with one’s own first grandchild is a very special, off-the-charts experience.

But so was being undivided and in the present.

It reminded me how much there is to be gained by being fully present to whatever I’m doing, whenever possible.  It reminded me how stressful it is to multi-task– even to just mentally multi-task.  And how in contrast, just being here now, wherever and whatever “here” is, is actually a qualitatively different experience.  And a better one. 

Since returning from Philly I’ve been able to bring some of this consciousness with me.  It’s helped me be in less of a hurry all the time.  It’s also helped me be more singleminded about what I’m doing.  When writing this post, for example, I’ve been able to just work on the post, rather than also feeling pulled in other directions.  

Sometime today or this week or this month, I encourage you to give yourself the gift of just doing one thing at a time.  Have a taste of being here now.  Even if you’re just clearing your desk or composing a simple email, I suspect it will feel better than it usually does.  If you try this while being in conversation with someone, I suspect the shift will be even more palpable.   

Moments of being here now and not rushing can serve as little oases where you can refresh.

Why is it so hard to do so many of the things that are GOOD for us?  Why is the fast-paced, adrenaline-laced life so much more fun than the slower-paced choices? 

I recently had a string of body mechanical problems, resulting in 3 different sets of physical therapy exercises I was supposed to do twice daily.  These are slow, boring moves.   I don’t do them during a class, with music pumping and a teacher urging me onward, a setting that feels, to me, more “fun.” 

In fact, one of the injuries happened during a class with the music pumping and a teacher urging me onward: I over-reached, lifted too much weight during a weight training class and injured a muscle or tendon in my upper arm.  No big surprise.

But PT felt like a punishment, at least at first.  I couldn’t go to class with the other boys and girls.  I had to be home alone in my living room with therabands, counting 30-second intervals.  Ida wanna hafta do this.   Poor me. 

But truly, as I learned the PT routines and began to see some results, I started doing the exercises the way I’m learning to do yoga with my excellent teacher, Victoria.   Instead of counting or timing thirty seconds, I could now just breathe deeply into the exercise for the right amount of time, which I had internalized.  And by just breathing into the moves,  being in the moment, I entered a more meditative space, good for my head.

Victoria tells us, ”Don’t get greedy on the mat.”  What she means is,  don’t be overly focused on the external look of the yoga pose at the expense of your well-being.   Don’t be so greedy that you don’t honor your body’s limits today.  Instead, she teaches, at some point, go for the inner pose, be ok with what is, be willing to stop fixing, perfecting, trying to make it perfect.

It was greediness in my weight training class that got me injured.  I was greedy for the achievement of  lifting more weight than I was really capable of lifting without injury.

I’ve healed two of the three injuries.  My challenge now is to stick with the exercises for the third one.   And to resist greed.

Fourteen years of coaching professional women have taught me some of the most prevalent patterns of imbalance and the interventions that can restore a sense of well-being and sanity.  

I don’t mean to sound facile about these solutions.  The details are always unique to the individual and difficult for her to see from within the experience.  Moving forward generally happens very slowly.  I don’t believe in a happily-ever-after kind of unconscious happiness, but I passionately believe that some kinds of suffering can be alleviated. 

Here are two patterns of imbalance — experienced as unhappiness — I’ve witnessed with my clients, my friends, and myself, and the course corrections that can make a difference.

1. Feeling out of control, overwhelmed, powerless.  The solution for this  generally involves:  

·     naming it as such, and thereby differentiating it from the feelings of despair, failure, and self-loathing that often accompany it

·     taking back control, increment by increment, wherever possible, by renegotiating agreements, selectively jettisoning obligations, re-prioritizing, and whatever else it takes

As a result, the individual regains firmer ground and some level of control in her life, and feels back in her own power again.  

2. Feeling drained, exhausted, depleted, even sick. 

·     Here too, the place to start is with awareness: name it for what it is, and separate it out from the sense of shame, emptiness, and failure that people often feel as a result of no longer having enthusiasm or passion FOR ANYTHING.  The no-enthusiasm-for-anything syndrome often shows up in people who are very drained and exhausted.

·     Generally what’s also called for is serious rest, recovery, and replenishment which often means cutting back somewhere in order to make room for this. 

In my experience, once people GET that this is what’s going on, that it’s not about personal failure but rather about personal depletion, the reframe is very empowering and they quickly figure out what to do.  They often need support thinking through the pragmatics of it and then implementing it.  Cutting back is particularly difficult for women with a habitual pattern of pleasing others.

As the depletion and exhaustion are replaced with a sense of being nourished and re-charged, at least some of the unhappiness recedes, leaving a generally happier camper.   And a more effective one.

Adequate self-care often results in greater effectiveness, across the board.  This ripple-out effect often surprises the individual, who may feel ”selfish” in administering the self care (often as a last resort).  But it does make sense.  Who’s likely to be the more effective manager, parent, or creative problem-solver: the person who’s exhausted, frazzled, and running on empty or the one whose batteries are charged and whose focus is unambivalent?

If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your work or your kids.

It’s a no-brainer, but we all forget sometimes.  The nagging, unresolved, unfinished stuff rolling around in our heads saps our energy.   It keeps us from being as effective as we could be because we’re not fully focused on what we’re doing.   For the same reason, it keeps us from enjoying our lives as fully as we could — we’re just not all there for the good stuff. 

Recent findings in brain research reveal that multi-tasking is not an efficient way to work.    Being preoccupied with one thing while doing another is a kind of  multi-tasking.  

While I’m writing this blog post, I’m also thinking about an extended conversation I’m having with my husband.   The background noise of the conversation clogs my writing process and slows me down.  I would be well served to either finish the conversation with him or table it until some specific future time.   If I were to do that, all the energy currently tied up in it would become available to me.  I certainly could use it.

Since finishing the conversation is not an option right NOW, I’m going to plan to do so (or at least resume it ) this evening when we’ll both be home and not working.   Making this decision should open up some bandwidth for me.  I’ll report in at the end of writing this post.

Meanwhile, I want to offer some anecdotal evidence for the point I’m making.  

The nagging, unfinished business under the surface for an accounting consultant I know was that three people on her team were not performing their jobs to the standard she thought was appropriate.  She wasn’t addressing it in any way other than fretting about it. 

Once she articulated it as a problem, she could address it proactively. For each of these employees, she drafted the specifics of what needed to change and initiated conversations with them in which she made it very clear to them what she expected and that this was not optional in any way. 

While she had had prior conversations with them about performance, she felt she had been too vague and general.  This time around, she was absolutely clear. 

The result was that two of the employees immediately started performing to the standard and have been doing so ever since: problem solved.   The third one required training and supervision to perform to the standard, and this training and supervision is currently underway in a structured, scheduled, and monitored configuration.

The secondary results are that the consultant: 
1. no longer feels preoccupied with this issue and has more focus and energy to do her work
2. is pleased with the work she did as a manager
3. is thrilled with the better work that her two employees are doing
4. will have an easier time doing this the next time it comes up in her professional life (and alas, it will)

My bottom line advice is to NOTICE what’s sapping your energy, what’s rolling around under the surface, what’s stressing you.  And then deal with it. 

And yes, I have to say that my own experience of writing this post improved once I decided I would resume my extended conversation tonight.  That allowed me to essentially drop it for now, and that was a good move.

In the Preoccupations  column in today’s New York Times, economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett writes that what women executives do to unwind is . . . NOTHING.  They lust for “chunks of empty space — no expectations, no agendas.” 

It’s not just women executives, I would add.  Any over-scheduled, busy professional would do well to use this strategy for re-charging her batteries.  I use the word “strategy” intentionally, because for most intensely busy people the prospect of doing nothing is complete anathema.  But when understood as a strategy for restoring one’s sanity, it’s more easily considered. 

In today’s post on her Profitable Consultant blog, internet marketing specialist Dianna Huff writes about her own experience regularly ”doing nothing” as a break from her work (as a marketing professional, entrepreneur, and advisor to profitable consultants).  She says the impact of taking such a break is that “I usually come back to the ‘real world’ refreshed, relaxed and focused.”

If you don’t regularly give yourself the gift of a real break like this, you’ll feel some guilt when you start.  But don’t let that keep you from starting.  Start small, with just a few minutes at a time.  It might feel boring at first, and you might be racked with guilt.  But tough it out; it’s worth it. 

“Doing nothing” not only re-charge your batteries, it can also put you into a state of receptivity to your own intuition and creativity.  Albert Einstein said something that applies here: ”The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” 

The truth is, you are not ACTUALLY doing nothing when you are “doing nothing.”  You are simply stepping out of active ”doing” and “thinking” mode,  and that allows other parts of your brain and your being to kick in, in the background.

This week someone told me about a tradition she has created in her family.  They call it Pajama Thanksgiving. 

She and her husband and their two young children get up on Thanksgiving Day when they feel like getting up, and they stay in their pajamas.  She gets a turkey into the oven when she does, and when it’s ready, they sit down and have a meal, the four of them together. 

 It’s the most relaxed and easy day in the entire year for them.

This is otherwise a very, very busy family. Both parents work full time, the kids go to school and extended day programs and do the kinds of activities that many kids do: music lessons, sports, theater, Sunday School, and so on. 

The parents crave time with their children with no agenda, no schedule to adhere to, no competing commitments.  The children crave time with their parents.  So there is no multi-tasking on Pajama Thanksgiving, no Blackberries in use, no company to get ready for, no time that everyone has to be “ready.”  

A Pajama Thanksgiving may not appeal to YOU in the least.  But for this family, this is just heavenly.   They love spending this day together.  The parents read to the kids.  The older daughter reads to her little brother.  They play games.  They make up games.  

When the little guy naps, the parents nap too, and the daughter watches a movie.   There might be a cookie-baking project.  There might be a crafts project.  There might not be.  As a family, they let the day unfold and they are each present to create and experience it with each other.  It is their authentic holiday. 

They have created their TG tradition from the inside out.  It’s not about the appearance of it;  it’s not about the form.   The form is simply the result of the deep inner need that’s getting satisfied:  the need for connected down time together with these particular people.  The need for a safe haven from the loud, incessant demands of daily life.  The need to not have to be “productive” in the task-list sense of things.

Many of us have created holiday traditions that are patterned after our workdays: there’s a schedule, there are people to see or people who come over, there is a timetable, there is pressure, there are people depending on us to deliver in certain ways, there are expectations to live up to.

The Pajama Family draws a strong boundary around this day and creates for themselves the holiday they truly need.

IN the opening chapter of The Art of Possibility, Roz Zander writes about a life lesson she learned on a white water rafting trip.

The rafting company put people through substantial training before going out on the water.  One key element of the training was “Toes to Nose.”  When you fall out of the raft into the thrashing water, they were taught, bring your toes to your nose and look for the boat.

Toes to nose keeps your feet from getting caught in the rocks below and brings you to the surface, where you can grab an oar or rope from the boat closest to you.  The trainer drummed this mantra into people’s heads til they rolled their eyes.  It had to be completely automatic, he said.

During the actual rafting trip, Roz was thrown into the roiling water.  The sudden shock of cold water, the absolute roar in her ears, the darkness of being submerged!  In the midst of massive sensory overload and the adrenaline rush of mortal crisis, she remembered and executed toes to nose.  Presto!  She was suddenly at the surface, visible to the instructor on the sweeper raft, who pulled her out of the water.

There is great value in having a survival mantra such as this for your everyday life. When crises and demands pile up and you are suddenly underwater . . . it can be a lifesaver to have an automatic instruction for yourself.   The instruction has to be simple enough that you remember it when you’re completely overloaded.

For a software engineer with a work crunch at work and approaching finals in her MBA program, the mantra she finds most useful is “‘Good enough’ is good enough.”  This simple slogan helps her manage her shrill inner perfectionist, who wants perfect results on all fronts, 24/7.  In real life, that’s neither an option nor a requirement.  For example, she doesn’t really need to ace her finals.

An executive director I know recently recognized how drained, miserable, and resentful she is of all the other people she takes such good care of: her staff, clients, board, and husband.   Her new survival instruction is, “Take care of yourself too!”

For an investment banker who takes work home every night but doesn’t do it, much to her own growing panic, the directive that makes a difference is, “Do what you have to do first.  Then do what you want.”

In a post-event interview, Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was asked, “How did you feel after you doubled the triple axel?”  She responded (and I paraphrase), ”I’m trained to go right on to the next move.  I don’t have the luxury of thinking about what I just did.  I just moved on.”

I personally am benefitting from ”Just move on.”  There is always time for analysis later, if that’s appropriate.

So . . . what’s your life-saving mantra, and in what situations does it serve you?  Consider drafting a candidate or two to test over the next 6 weeks: simple instructions which could offer you some safety when you get bounced out of the raft.  See if you can come up with your own “toes to nose” to deploy into the New Year.

Something very curious is happening in my business.  I am being contacted more frequently these days to consult or present to a variety of organizations regarding flexible scheduling:

• how individuals can most successfully propose it to their managers
• how managers can have effective conversations about it
• the degree to which flexible scheduling helps retain talented individuals
• how an individual can figure out whether/how his job can be flexed
• how an individual can know whether flex is “the answer” for her/him.

I come to this topic from the perspective of the individual; most of my work since 1995 has been coaching individual professionals on work-life and career-related dynamics.  Since many of my clients are managers, I also know the perspective of the individual manager regarding her own work-life balance and flex options as well as those of her direct reports. 

Why am I seeing a sudden uptick in inquiries about the policy side of things?  Have we reached some tipping point and now organizations in many more industries have to offer flexible scheduling policies in order to attract and retain the talent they need?  As distinct from just a few years ago, when only the most progressive industries and companies had such policies?  Is this only happening in companies experiencing growth?  In fact, all of the organizations I’ve heard from are doing well.

But I know some companies are scaling back on flex policies, siting the recession as the cause.  And I know that some individuals who would love to flex their jobs are not even thinking about bringing it up right now, they are so afraid of making waves, so afraid of losing their jobs.

What’s happening in your industry and in your organization?  Are policies for flexible scheduling part of your landscape?  Who uses them? 

In some organizations, they’re only available to the most senior and talented people with the best track records, and only then because these people make it clear they won’t stay at the company without them. 

In other companies, flex policies are used mostly by people who are not ambitious and not on the leadership track; working a reduced or non-standard schedule can be both an indicator and cause of being off the leadership track at places where this is the culture.

Still other companies have flex policies that are used by their executive leadership, who not only support it, they also model it.  These tend to be the companies where flexing thrives, and so does the business.   

I suspect that the increase I am seeing in work-life policy work indicates that a tipping point has been reached and many more organizations are scrambling to institute these policies.  Just the way I imagine at some point many years ago, another tipping point was reached and organizations realized they needed to offer health insurance. 

Either that or some recent change to the SEO strategy on my website  has just made me findable in a new way.  Or both.