My Four Faves of 2022
My inbox is full of newsletters with reviews of 2022: what people are proud of, their highs, lows, and lessons learned. I enjoy the short and sweet ones the most, so today’s Tending Letter will be just that: short, sweet, and tender!
It’s hard to sum up a whole year in a single email. At the same time, I value the power reflection has to reveal things I might not have noticed. When we compile lists of things with commonalities like “I liked this” or “this was hard for me,” we might discover small shifts we’d like to make in the future.
Below I’m sharing four of my favorite parts of the year. Not because they’re all positive (one was actually a challenge for me), but because they all helped me in different ways. I focused more on slow productivity things in this list, but my most favorite part of the year was marrying Kris with all my besties there. :)
Changed My Life: Rachael Stephen’s Constellation System
My life changed for the better when I stared using Rachael Stephen’s Constellation System. I also learned how to bullet journal from Rachael’s videos, so I’m a big fan of her work!
I interviewed Rachael about her System in July: You can read the newsletter about it here and watch the video interview here. To summarize the system in one sentence: instead of splitting your life into “work vs. personal,” you utilize six life domains to organize your plans, goals, and to-do lists. When I made this shift, I stopped thinking about fitting my life around my business and I started spending more time and energy on my spirituality, relationships, and creativity. I used Rachael’s suggestion to color-code the domains, which makes it easy to look at my Google Calendar or bullet journal and see if I’m too heavy on purple (my color for Divitiae, or work/money) and if I need to make more space for orange (Genero, or creativity), pink (Socialis, or relationships), green (Corporalis, or body), turquoise (Spiritus, or spirituality), or red (Domum, or home). So helpful!
Rachael’s coming out with a Constellation System deck soon and I can’t wait to get mine! If you want to learn more about the system, check out her free guide.
Helped Me Practice Self-Care: Finch
My friend Anastasia introduced this app to me, and it completely shifted the ways I practice self-care! The premise of Finch is that you have a little virtual bird friend (I named mine “Peanut”) who cheers you on as you do self-care practices. In productivity talk, it gamifies the process of building new habits: when you complete a task and check it off, you get points that you exchange for your bird to go on little adventures and tell you about them when it finishes them. You can either enter in your own to-do tasks or use the ones it suggests, like doing couch exercises, listening to a soundscape, or reflecting on your day.
But Finch does something particularly awesome: if you can’t complete a task for whatever reason, you can write a note about why you didn’t do it and you still get points. As someone who lives with chronic illness that causes fatigue, I can’t always do some of the tasks I’d like to. But instead of feeling shameful, I feel engaged and supported. Thanks, Peanut! Thanks, Finch!
Helped Me Take Care of Myself (Even When I Resisted): Rest
I experienced a long bout of fatigue this fall unlike anything I’ve felt in about 5 years. I started The Tending Year as an experiment with relearning how to be productive as a chronically ill person who struggles with workaholism. Over the years, I’ve tried to walk my talk, exemplifying Slow Productivity through tangible applications, but I was struggling to truly nourish my life behind the scenes as I moved though this current bout of fatigue.
I decided to cut down on exercise and didn’t run in the 5K I was so excited to run. I took real time off to rest my body, sleep in, and recover my energy. I didn’t realize at first why that was so hard for me, but as I’m writing this now, I can see the overlap between this period of fatigue and the onset of my back pain in 2017 that put a hard stop to the spin classes I was joyfully attending. Five years ago I felt ripped away from the PRs (personal records) that I tied to my self-worth. This season of fatigue is teaching me that prioritizing rest is actually a way of reaffirming my worth: I am worth taking time to rest, and rest is absolutely worth it.
Improved My Daily Life & Business: 10-4 Workdays
2022 is the first year that I fully supported myself through my business with coaching, consulting, workshops, programming, and book sales. Without a boss to report to or a time card to punch, I could clock in and out anytime I liked. The labors of running a coaching business started to sneak into my mornings, evenings, and weekends, even though I officially “only” worked Monday through Friday. Before long, I noticed I was overworking and overwhelming.
In August, I experimented with doing a 10am-4pm workday to set boundaries around when I worked (you can read the Tending Letter about it here). I’m proud to report that I’ve stuck with it most days! Sometimes I choose to start earlier or to end later if I’m on a deadline or if I have non-work tasks in the middle of the day, but it averages out. This gave me time to rest in the morning by cozying up and reading books or sleeping in when I need a little extra rejuvenation.
After I identified my four favorites and wrote about them, I reviewed them to check for patterns. Here’s what I noticed:
I am trying to unlearn my tendencies towards urgency and perfection.
Sometimes trying my best looks like compassionately accepting my limitations.
I am motivated by gamifying my to-do list (like when I get “points” in the Finch app for completing tasks).
When I find a structure or system that works, I thrive.
I benefit when I see rest as a necessity instead of a luxury.
I then summarized my patterns down into one approach I can explore in 2023: Build a foundation that will support you as you listen to your intuition.
What about you?
What were your favorite parts of the year? Take a minute to list them out and journal about them. Do you notice any patterns? If you had to write one suggestion for yourself, what would it be? I’d love to hear how this exercise goes for you!
What’s coming up in 2023?
Coaching: I’m currently booking clients for the new year! If you’d like to learn more about coaching, click here. My coaching services are especially helpful for folks who are motivated by external accountability and who are trying to complete a multistep project or goal. Here are some of the things I supported my clients with in 2022:
Finishing prospectuses, dissertations, and PhDs
Shifting careers, applying to jobs, and starting businesses
Applying to and getting accepted to grad school programs
Setting boundaries around their availability in leadership roles
Finishing manuscripts and publishing their writing
And most importantly, developing practices to help them take care of themselves throughout their processes.
Workshops: If you like my *~*vibe*~* when it comes to productivity and you work at an organization or university, book me for a workshop or two! I ran workshops for academic, corporate, and nonprofit clients this year and I’d love to support your group with developing intentional productivity practices in 2023.
Intentionally Productive Scholars Program: I developed this program to teach undergraduates how to develop intentional productivity, time management, prioritization, focus, rest, and self-care practices to support them in finishing college without feeling overwhelmed. I revamped my whole IPSP program for next year with new content and lowered the price for cohorts up to 25 students! You can learn more about IPSP and watch a short video about the program here.
Thanks for being a reader this year and trusting me with your precious time and energy. I hope you all have a lovely rest of your year, tenderhearts! I’ll see you in 2023 for more sustainable, intentional, and slow productivity.
xo,
Dr. Kate