It’s tax season and every day is get up; figure out which office I’m assigned to and get to work; work, work, work. Get home; do a survival chore (dishes, laundry, groceries, etc.); slip in some writing; and at least one thing for my other gigs (edit, review, read). Go, go, go. Remember to eat and sleep, because I’m in a marathon and I can’t fall down because I forgot basic chores for keeping the body running.
I’m at capacity. Especially right now when W-2 are landing in mail boxes every day.
My cup overflows.
John G. Hartness wrote a Magical Words post on October 3, 2016 about “Managing Your Capacity.”
Right now, my capacity isn’t dedicated to writing. Basically six months of the combination of package then tax season, then a calmer six months of conventions with some gig work. During the Convention season, writing and editing will increase.
Mr. Hartness points out your capacity changes, and that is okay. Work with your creative energy to get big projects done with big energy and small projects done with small energy. Right now, I got small creative energy, but that works just fine for putting up a blog.
Again the URL is: http://www.magicalwords.net/john-hartness-2/making-money-mondays-managing-your-capacity/
January brings a host of resolutions and resolves – the biggest combo is work better and clean stuff. Strangely the work better often comes from cleaning stuff. Having room to work without the mental fatigue of seeing other tasks and duties can make a huge difference in attitude.
Between package season for my post office job and tax season for my other day-job, my desk is buried in paperwork and project lists and I don’t know when I will get through it all. There are tasks years old that I still mean to get to someday. My honey-do list to myself.
When I did the yard hole-fill-in last year (see lawn leveling), I got rejuvenated. A task weighing me down was released to the ether. Hope raised and danced the jig for a time.
WRITING EXERCISE
Take two hours (or whatever the project needs) and clean one thing you’ve been meaning to clean. This isn’t a procrastination from writing, but an energy building project. Clean something bothering in the line of sight of your desk. Squeaky wheel – WD-40. Leaky pen – throw it out and replace. One stack of papers that keeps shifting – actually clear it. If it drains energy instead of putting a smile on your face when sitting at your writing desk, fix it.
Just one thing today.
Maybe you need to have one hour of your writing week set aside to maintaining your HAPPY work space. Think about it. If the mess is draining your writing, making it hard to start or to maintain, then something needs doing. Maybe an all out attack like Mr. Coe did over several days (he is a full-time writer, so take that into account on his ability to focus), maybe a happy tree fix once a week.
Comment below on what you did to make your writing space more pleasant to work in this week.
A lot of it has to do, not with work and effort, but making decisions, especially for women. If both partners are working full-time, and come home and only one is making all the decisions there, someone has two full-time jobs even if the other partner is helping out when asked. Often putting together enough energy to ask for help takes as much energy as doing it yourself.
Sit down with your partner and split the decision-making and the task work. When I had a partner, I figured out making meals (making the meal plan, creating the grocery list, shopping and stocking the food, cleaning the cooking area, cooking to schedule so all the dishes come out at the same time, setting the table, clearing the meal dishes and cooking pans, doing the dishes, and putting everything away) took as much decision-making and task energy as THE REST OF THE HOUSE COMBINED (yard work, laundry, and clearing & cleaning).
If you have a partner, find time to sit down and state how to help with various tasks. Like “I’ll do the laundry and put things in baskets by the door, and you take them and put them away when you see them out.” If cues can be set up to let the other person know when and how to help, the decision maker doesn’t need to make another decision of asking each and every time (becoming a nag). “After the last kid leaves the table, can you get it cleared immediately while I work on the kitchen, then jump in with the kids and get their homework started.”
And both sides need to say thank you.
Emma’s “You Should have Asked” – https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/ – is such a shout out to how women are buried under the combination of full-time work AND house work. And, no, it isn’t the case in every house – I know two homes where the male partner is the stay-at-home parent – but in the vast majority, it is the case and that needs to be changed. And as we know change comes only two ways – preparation (talking and planning) or disaster. Don’t wait for the person doing double-load on the decision making to collapse. Have the conversation and find out what are the hidden tasks and decisions you might not be noticing.
Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work. (Anne 2022)
If both are working outside the home, it doesn’t matter how “high-powered” the job is, both are constantly making decisions for work. Stocking shelves depends on which needs to be stocked when (say morning coffee needs to be out first, but school supplies by three, and dinner makings by six), how much, and where. In a partnership (marriage or living arrangement), one of the couple is not the home manager.
Okay, now to focus on the GEEKING SCIENCE part of this.
decision fatigue … is a state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions (Berg 2021)
The pandemic has made this worse for everyone. A simple run to a store now has four or five additional decisions, especially when COVID-19 started in impacting life in 2020 – mask or not mask, which store, what has the least risk, do we really need this, who is the house is best suited to go. People were exhausted learning how to zoom, work from home, deal with the home stuff – heck, how to dress for the day! Nothing was the same anymore. That first year everyone was in a haze. Most thought “shock”, but a lot of the exhausted-haze was being buried under decision-making from the lost of routines.
It used to be a joke of a woman “can’t decide what to eat.” That was because she was buried under the house-management and the day-job together and used up all her decision-making ability. During COVID, even the previously protected privileged from double-decision-management, started “binge-watching” Netflix at night … not so much from “I want to see this entire show in one sitting” as “I sat on the couch and stared at the black screen and pushed a button out of habit. I couldn’t get the energy to make the decision to turn it off and go to bed.” People started skipping meals, not because they weren’t hungry, but because they couldn’t decide TO EAT, let alone WHAT to eat, or HOW to make something to eat.
As the brain exhausts its decision-making through the day, it starts doing shortcuts – impulse, avoid, procrastinate, and just don’t decide at all. One of the reasons expensive decisions should be made early in the day; shopping for food at night rather than in the morning will have a lot more impulse buys. Fast food buys happen more at night. The shopping channel sells more at night.
Doctors recommend making lists before shopping to reduce decision-making in the store. You cut out entire aisles of choices with a list in hand. (Berg 2021)
Become aware of mental load and decision fatigue. Maybe some of the New Year resolutions should focus on reducing decisions. Things like “I will create a routine of setting out my clothes at night.” and “Me and my partner will make meal decisions for the week on Saturday and post it on the fridge.”
Take care of yourselves y’all. Work together and support each other.
(Interesting side-note – Anne is Kenya and Emma is France. This is not just an American or European thing.)
Bibliography
Anne (AuDHD Electrical Engineer. @W_Asherah). “Someone has asked me what else I’ve observed. And oh boy – there’s another really messed up one. Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work.” twitter.com. 6/14/2022. – last viewed 12/13/2022. (see below for extra)
Since Twitter is having a meltdown, I’ve retyped the screen shots for (Anne 2022) below. (Bolding is my emphasis.)
Someone has asked me what else I’ve observed. And oh boy – there’s another really messed up one. Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work. Let me look for the thread (June 14, 2022)
Autism and gender. Do you have a woman in your life who knows everything, plans everything, thinks for everyone, helps solve all problems? Does everyone depend on that woman so much they would be lost without her? Her friends, family, colleagues?
Then joking about “how women can’t decide what to eat” like it’s a cutesy thing. Sir, your (insert) has been making so many decisions that her brain has shut down and won’t let her make any more. She’s literally struggling with comprehending the stuff on the menu. Help her!
The human brain doesn’t have limitless decision-making capacity – it has a bandwidth which when exhausted, someone struggles to think even the most basic thoughts. It’s why you’ll get shouted at for asking “where can I find the spoon.” That “I don’t know” is honest.
The brain, at that moment, doesn’t have the bandwidth to figure out where the spoon is – even when it’s something they put somewhere ever day. It’s super easy for Autistics to realize this in themselves because our social bandwidth is near non existent – we guard the little we have.
(next several tweets are links to articles about decision-making fatigue – some are behind paywalls, but (Berg 2021) is part of the bibliography)
If you relate with both threads – you need a mental health regroup. It’s bad bad. You need to collect yourself before you’re on several sets of antipsychotics for people reasons. If you’re already on them, see if you’re medicating the symptom and try dealing with the source.
It’s 1 pm in Kenya. Off I go.
(thread date changes to June 15)
I don’t know why anyone thinks I’m interested in debating things that impact women’s mental health. Like okay, your sensibilities have been offended and you’re emotionally hurt – learn emotional regulation, sir. I’m here talking to people who are literally breaking down healthwise
And do you know what happens when women show up sick in hospital? They are told they are anxious. They are told “it’s all in your head“. Then when we talk about things that make women anxious and affect their mental health, there’s clowns who want to center themselves.
This isn’t about me. Repeat that to yourself enough times. It’s about people who should start caring for themselves as much as they care for others. Because few people ask “how is the person caring for me doing?”. They just take and drain. And that causes health problems.
We are anxious. We are fatigued. Some are burned out. Some are severely burned out. Someone decides to tweet likely explanations to other women. You get offended because “that’s not the case in my life as a man”. Well, great. Clap for your exceptional self and keep moving.
(Retweet from OziomaOnukogue.eth: Another name for this is: Mental Load. This book by Emma explains it all. We end up making <so many> small tiny decisions that’s there’s barely space to focus on big ones. Yes, the brain freezes from overwork, just like a computer. That’s why it’s not helpful to call women multitaskers.)
Some responses (not copying the twitter tags on these)
On the verge of tears because my God all of this! I’m so tired that by the end of the day I’m literally only capable of staring at the wall.
Yes and once I get the baby to bed I just want to sit and relax but get flak from my SO for not showing interest in him. I’m so tired.
Funny, I still had to make all the decisions in my house even when I ALSO had a full time job.
I’m a single mom now and still make all the decisions. But at least no one criticizes me for them now. Somehow it’s easier. (RESPONSE: Makes sense. If he wasn’t a partner in making decisions, then without him you have one less mental/emotional dependent.)
The number of men I know who “don’t know where things go” in their own drawers/kitchen/refrigerator/house. (RESPONSE: And if you ask them to put it away anyway, they will choose the single most ridiculous, obviously wrong place for it and then do the “but you wouldn’t tell me where to put it.”
I started answering the “whatever you want” with “I want not to have to decide”
Self-promotion is self-care. Getting a better job so you don’t have to work as hard, getting your books seen, finding the best fit for you by letting those around you know you are looking for a better fit. Whether for day job or the write job, self-promotion is necessary.
I know we all be taught “pride goeth before the fall” – but it is actually “an haughty spirit before a fall”. It isn’t pride/satisfaction in a job well done, or letting people know “we did this” that is the road to destruction, but rubbing it in, immersing yourself in raising yourself over others and not seeing the worth in them as well as yourself. Raise up others, raise up yourself.
As we enter the time both of seasonal depression and of the winter holiday gift-giving season, I thought a little focus on self-promotion is in order. 25% of books are bought during the winter holiday season in the US of A (https://publishingperspectives.com/2020/11/npd-one-in-four-books-is-purchased-in-the-usa-during-the-holidays-covid19/#:~:text=Just%20to%20clarify%20the,of%20its%20annual%20print%20sales.). If you are a writer, October is the beginning of SELL-season. If you are a day-job worker, well, the summer graduates job hunting is done, the high school and college interns are settled, and the HR departments need to fill in slots left by parents who thought they could work and have the kids be in school at the same time and discovered otherwise.
So here is the Exercises for this month:
If you are impacted by seasonal depression (and, be truthful to yourself, the answer is yes, you are … everyone is), do one of both of the following for your house. (a) Replace any and all burnt out light bulbs. Light up the house! (b) Buy one new lamp to put in your work area or reading area or somewhere shadows bring in the gloom.
For the day-job, do one of the following: (a) brush off the resumee, clean it up – what have you been doing new on the job? what non-profit work have you done? Just give it a good scrub – but the short one to send into places and the long-time tracking so if you pivot your job, you have things to add. (b) If you like the company you work for, go hang out a moment with HR and talk about what you would like to do. See what other opportunities are there and if there is mentoring or training available. Make yourself attractive. (c) If you need to stretch your wings, send out a couple-few resumees. See if there are any bites. Take three nights and send out one a night.
For the WRITING EXERCISE, for three nights this month and three nights in November, do self-promotion of your works on the social media platform(s) you use – facebook, blog, youtube, instagram, tik-tok, etc. Let people know where to find your stuff – short stories, novellas, art, whatever you have created.
Comment below where you self-promoted and what you marketed.
My attempt I let a lot of things slide for a long time during COVID, but I’ve been kicking things back in gear, posting in the blog and on my Facebook page, as well as participating in some flash writing for a facebook group.
And don’t forget Honestly is still out there on Amazon to purchase or reading through Kindle Unlimited.
Some people swear by performing a ritual before starting writing to get their mind separated from “everything that needs to be done while I at home” to “I’m working.” Separating Home-Work-Chores from Working-from-Home is necessary, as many people have found out over the last few pandemic years.
Rituals to compartmentalize the Home from the Work space in the head allows one to return from work to home. Otherwise, someone is either always at work (a horrible situation) or at home (with the related distractions and related stress). Writers have been facing this issue for years.
Some of my writing friends separate Work-and-Home physically instead of just mentally, by going to Starbucks or other location. Locally, a bar-coffee-shop welcomes writers during NaNoWritMo. Two mugs can get a long way into your word count.
Leaving my cozy cottage doesn’t work well for me. My brain considers that friend time or “other” work time. But having writing-work not being distinct from home makes me depressed over time. Fortunately about the time the depression has be crossing into unproductive, is about the time tax season kicks in.
I need to find a solution to separate the brain spaces better.
Finding the right ritual for me would help. 500 words per day worked for several months. Using a timer lasted about two alarms. Food hints – like a cup of herbal tea or just past lunch – those haven’t had any success for me. Smell is more related to a place separation for me; but incense in the house doesn’t work, as the scent the incense sticks around for days. Smell isn’t a good ritual divider for me, just a space identifier.
Coming back from other jobs and just sitting down and writing doesn’t give me the mind-set change I need to create. I need a break between the two efforts. But the break can’t take too long or be too distracting. For example, for many people, once the TV is on – it’s on for the night as one show passes into another and before you know it, you’ve binged for four hours. I can’t afford that if I want to produce saleable product.
I need an hour break after coming home. A mind-free time, then a ritual to get restarted.
Mindy Klasky gives a list of “Writing Rituals” which work for her in Magical Words 9/15/2011 posting. The comments include other writers goto choices:
Read it over for suggestions.
WRITING EXERCISE: Pick a ritual and try it for a week (or seven times, if you don’t write daily) to kick start your writing. Does it help get your head in the right space? Does it help you feel more relaxed and less stressed about your writing and the rest of your life?
I’m going to try and use the timer method again, but without the buzzer. I got a pretty hourglass which I will flip over. All I have to do is concentrate on writing while the sands are falling. Play a game of solitaire (and only one!) to turn off the mind from everything else in the house, open the door and curtains to let in even more light, and flip the hourglass. Wish me luck!
What ritual did you develop and how has it worked for you?
