Carve out an hour with no gadgets and nothing else pulling at you. What matters isn’t just the absence of distractions, but the 100% certainty that no one can physically disturb you — even if they try. I usually do this at a café, phone in airplane mode.
Grab a sheet of paper / a notebook / a tablet. Something you can write on with a pen or a stylus.
Do the “Promise Audit” exercise:
-
Write down every promise you’ve made to other people for the next 2 months (order the kitchen, file for the visa, finish the project, and so on). Keep writing until you run out.
-
Write down every promise you’ve made to yourself for the same period (get your Spanish to B2, run 5 days a week, spend 3 hours a day job-hunting, read Joyce / Proust, and so on).
-
Write down what you think others expect of you, even though you never explicitly promised it (150 minutes a day with the family, being online for colleagues, calling your parents, and so on).
-
Look at this list. Admit that you won’t get to all of it. Your energy is limited. Admitted it? Then let’s move on.
-
Cross out a few items from each list. Crossing one out might mean writing to someone: “sorry, there’s no way I can do this before July.” It might mean telling yourself: “fine, until July I’m not trying to learn Japanese and run a marathon.”
Look at the list with a few items crossed out. Cross out a couple more. Look again.
Repeat this step until it gets easier.
Feel better?
- Move everything that’s left into a separate list — that’s the one to start planning your coming days and weeks from.
A note: doing this on the run is pointless. Set aside at least an hour. And if you can’t carve out that hour because the stress is too intense — then the problem needs solving on a different level (I’ll write about that separately).