Pushing Through Pain
My cat died recently. Her name was Ms. Lucy and as cliché as it sounds, she was my best friend. Frankly, she was more than that. She was my study buddy through grad school and my colleague in the home office. I’m pretty sure that she knew how to read because she was always fixated on looking at my computer screen as I typed. Now that she’s gone, I still can’t bring myself to wipe off all the marks she left on the screen from sneezing.
After she died, I was speechless. Productivity stopped, and I felt stuck. Without my furry little friend to proofread, anything computer related felt empty and meaningless. I tried to distract myself with other activities or reason with myself that I was overreacting. It didn’t work. Minutes would turn into hours and still nothing would get accomplished. It sucked.
In efforts of distracting myself, I went to the gym to sweat through the heartache. As my trainer pushed me through a variety of exercises, my mind started to wonder.
I thought about the meaning of strength, in mind, body, and spirit.
While in plank position, as my arms and core trembled, I recognized the strength in my legs for being able to hold my body weight. With each bicep curl, I appreciated the strength in my arms when I perform surgeries. Then, we moved onto pushups. They humble me. It usually takes so much of my strength to get through the set and they still kick my ass. Anyhow, while I was pushing away and cursing how heavy my body weight is to make them so hard, I had an epiphany.
Instead of looking at pushups as an inelegant way of lifting my bodyweight, I looked at it as pushing back against the world. With each push, the perception of lifting a heavy heart turned into telling the universe, “This heavy heart won’t slow me down, you pushed me and now I’m pushing you back!” With that new mantra, my strength started to return.
At the end of the workout, I came up with five ways to push back and become productive again.
1. Pair what sucks with what doesn’t suck.
I love fine wine. Collecting them and learning their stories makes me happy. However, I don’t love managing invoices. I find them tedious and chasing after incorrect line items can be upsetting at times. So, in easing back to being productive, I pour myself a nice glass of wine, play some classical music and savor a sip when I get to the end of an invoice.
2. Trade tasks
When chatting with my partners in our morning meetings, we always go through our tasks for the day. At the end of the meeting, I always ask if there is anything anyone doesn’t feel like doing. Often, there is something on someone else’s list that I’d rather do than something on my list. We trade, and shit gets done.
3. Find a work buddy
Being an entrepreneur means working every single day. You read that correctly, every single day. It’s part of the deal, and when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. However, it does get lonely at times…particularly with a dead cat. When working outside of traditional work hours, I reach out to a friend to work together. This means sitting together and working on our own shit. It can be a little distracting, but a little distraction is better than not getting any work done at all.
4. Knock off the lower hanging fruit
I look at this one as a complete cheat, but it really helps with feeling better. Go through your to-do list and do all of them that will take ten minutes or less. It feels great having a bunch of items crossed off the list when you didn’t feel like working to begin with.
5. Time box
Following up on my recently deceased cat’s insurance claims was horrible. Each bill was a reminder of what my poor Ms. Lucy experienced in her final months. Worse, reaching out to her doctors because the insurance company needed more information was not among my favorite activities of the year. In dealing with this, I set aside Ms. Lucy time as 10am until noon, twice a month to manage her bills. A couple times I was saved by running out of time to continue. Other times, all that was needed was fifteen minutes. The rest of the time was spent doing something for me.