Self-sabotage
When good traits turn bad
Today would have been a rest and recovery day. I knew that from the moment I got up. I was mostly able to do that: I found things to do that were well-suited to my low energy level, and I even got in a really long nap. The only thing is, I had to do this blog post, and that’s when it went all pear-shaped (I love British expressions).
I have the blessing of always wanting to figure out ways to do my work better. Most of the time, this is a great asset. However, on days like this, that blessing can turn into a curse. When I attempt to coerce myself into working through a recovery day, that is when I rebel.
One of the ways I like to rebel is not just hating the work, but hating the way I do the work. All of it. This is me at my most destructive. Everything is wrong. I am going to make it right, and then everything will be great again. I will tear apart my finely-crafted productivity systems, all in search for a way to do things better: the perfect system. This is more than just procrastination; this is work avoidance to the nth degree.
Before I recognized this as a pattern that I engaged in, I would lose days of productive work lurching from one set of systems to the next, only to repeat it a couple of months later when the feeling reappeared. It still creeps in on occasion when I don’t notice it happening ahead of time — thankfully not on as grand a scale anymore. Today was a good day; I was happy to have noticed that destructive feeling before I did anything rash.
My tendency to self-sabotage is definitely clustered with feelings of Impostor Syndrome. I have (finally) learned that on days where I’m feeling this “burn it all to the ground” feeling, I can’t trust my judgment or my own perceptions about my work or the systems which I use to produce it, because they are all pretty much wrong. The two go hand in hand: maybe if I can find the perfect system, my work will actually be good, and not such crap.
How to combat this? Not agree to 90-day Blogging Challenges where you need to produce something every single $^%(#&* day. 🤬🤷♂️
In all seriousness, rest and recovery are important. I am also starting to look at techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to deal with these occasions where my feelings and perceptions are clearly not matching reality. And stepping back and treating with a dose of self-empathy.
This is the post for Day 64 of my 90-Day Blogging Challenge. Check out the Hacking Words publication for past articles, and follow the publication or me on Twitter for links to future articles. Clap for this post using the button below, and share far and wide. Thank you!
