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When I started researching personal productivity in 2018, I noticed a pattern: all the productivity authors were talking about time, energy, and focus. There were tools and methods galore for each one: time blocking, boxing, and tracking, the top ten things you should do before 7 am, and dozens of hacks for squeezing the most out of every day. It was the time of the girlboss and the refrain that “we all have the same hours in a day as Beyoncé,” but pushing myself to exhaustion in pursuit of perfection was what led me to burnout in the first place.

Living with chronic pain and chronic illness means that I experience time, energy, and focus in unique ways. I can’t always predict how long a task will take, and if I have brain fog or back pain, “easy” tasks can become unexpectedly complicated.

Part of what motivated me to start my blog The Tending Year, where I researched, practiced, and blogged about a new productivity tool every week from 2018-2019, was that I wanted to help people like me relearn how to be productive in sustainable ways. I prodded the ways I’d forced myself into time management, prioritization, and focus practices that no longer served me (or maybe never did?). Then, I finally decided that physical, emotional, and mental experiences were personal resources just as significant as time, energy, and focus. 

Personal resources fuel our productivity. Some can be renewed, like refreshed energy and focus after a nap, and some are nearly impossible to get back once they’re gone. 

Your specific personal resources will change depending on the day, time of day, project, or task. This shift in our capacity is natural (even if we don’t like when it happens), and when it comes to being productive, awareness of your personal resources can help you strategically choose which tasks to focus on and when, so you can get things done without exhausting or overworking yourself. 

Everybody has a unique experience with personal resources, and my goal as a Productivity Coach is not to encourage people to overeffort, but rather to invite them to be curious and develop sustainable practices based on their lived experience. 

I’m sharing about personal resources now because September is the start of a new semester, a time when you may be not only setting goals for yourself, but also teaching or mentoring others whose productivity you’ll evaluate. And if you’re not in academia, September still brings a seasonal shift, where you may be reflecting on what you haven't finished yet or what you’re hoping to start next.

Like many other folks who live with chronic illness or chronic pain, I use the Spoon Theory to track my energy levels and communicate them to my friends and partner.

Christine Miserandino developed the metaphor of Spoon Theory to explain the daily experience of having chronic illness to someone who does not share that same experience (see a PDF of the Spoon Theory here). By giving her “healthy” friend (her language) 12 spoons and taking away spoons to represent energy expenditure on tasks such as preparing for work, traveling, cooking, and dealing with emergencies, Miserandino “explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to.” The Spoon Theory thus serves as a metaphor to show that people expend energy differently.

Some people really like using the Spoon Theory as a way to measure their energy levels, and some people prefer other metaphors, like a cell phone battery that cannot fully charge to 100%. I know some folks who are chronically ill or have chronic pain who don’t like to use the Spoon Theory, and that’s okay, too. You can learn more about the Spoon Theory in this blog post and on the Wikipedia page for Spoon Theory, which links to academic articles pertaining to the Spoon Theory.

The ways we describe our energy levels are very personal.

My “energy” is what fuels me to do physical practices like exercising, starting new projects, and  problem-solving when I’m feeling stumped or anxious.

My spoons feel like a much deeper reserve of energy that I tap into when I’m having a flare up or experiencing fatigue. I don’t usually think about how many spoons I have until I feel worn down and need to decide where to put my limited energy. For example, I might not think of going to the gym at 7:30am as using a “spoon” because I have energy in the morning, but cooking, washing dishes, taking a shower, or navigating a difficult conversation in the evening when I’m tired most definitely uses my spoons.

Maybe this is because it’s more challenging for me to estimate how much I can do when I’m in periods of higher energy, whereas when I’m in a flare up (which causes fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, headaches), I must identify what amount of efforting will tip me over into burnout.

I’ve never really used the cell phone battery metaphor to track my energy, but I’m wondering now if that might be a helpful tool for me to track how it feels to spend my energy throughout the day so evenings aren’t so tiring for me!

I’ll leave you with an exercise I like to share in workshops about personalizing your productivity practice. As a reminder, personal resources are the things that fuel your productivity (both for work and for personal, creative, and social activities). This list includes but isn’t limited to: time, energy, focus, physical comfort, mental health, mood, spoons (if applicable), money, community support, and any other resources you feel support your productivity.

• What is your current relationship with your personal resources when it comes to being productive? You can answer this question in a few ways: a general overview tied to a specific resource from the list above, for a specific time period, or tied to a specific project or domain of your life, like your writing practice, parenting, training for a marathon, etc.

• Are you struggling with any of your personal resources? Where are you getting by? Where are you thriving?

• What would you like your relationship or experience with your personal resources to be in the future? Again, you can select a particular time frame, project, or part of your life to focus your answer.

• Is there a small thing you can do now to affect your personal resources to help you get closer to the experience you hope to have?

As individualized as our personal resources are, it’s still helpful to talk about them collectively. Being candid about our access to energy, or lack thereof, is a powerful way to subvert the agenda of “productivity hacks” that slowly chip away at our humanity. I hope you’ll spend some time reflecting on your personal resources! 

Curiosities

• Brooke McAlary’s research and writing on slow living has been incredibly meaningful for me, particularly when I was first navigating living with chronic pain and relearning how to be productive. I’m delighted that after a hiatus she’s back with a new podcast called The Tortoise & The Hare where she is unpacking the nuance in topics like slow living culture’s ties to optimization and capitalism as well as sharing her experience being diagnosed with Autism and ADHD. I’m so glad you’re back, Brooke!

• I continue to delight in reading. Here’s my list from August, including a trope I didn’t realize I love, sentient plants as side characters!

  • The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch (queer romantasy)

  • The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch (queer romantasy, sequel to book above)

  • Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne (queer romantasy with sentient plant)

  • Murder at the Spirit Lounge by Jess Kidd (cozy mystery)

  • Shrink Solves Murder by Philippa Perry (cozy mystery, great if you like The Thursday Murder Club books)

  • The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst (cozy romantasy with more sentient plants)

• And finally, I have another dog name suggestion, “Funny Business,” whose nickname would be (and shout out to my spouse Kris for coming up with this one!): “The Bizz.”

Take care and talk soon,

Dr. Kate

Email: [email protected]

Website: katehenry.com

Podcast: Honing In

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