It’s Crunch Time: How a Personal Framework Helps You Stay Productive and Calm
The true test of a personal framework is whether it supports you during a busy, stressful time.
With a personal framework, you make some strategic decisions in times of peace and calm, about the things that remain generally true for you to live well, whether you are busy or not.
Broadly, this includes writing down your decisions about:
big-picture things that are important to you to live out (your values, the kind of person you want to be)
and the small, ordinary daily or weekly routines that sustain and energize you (your productivity and self-care practices; household chores)
A personal framework is not about productivity, in the sense of lining up specific goals and projects. It’s about equipping yourself mentally, spiritually, and emotionally before you even begin. We used to live in western Alaska. If you go camping in western Alaska, you need certain skills and certain equipment.
An individual camping trip is like an individual goal or project. But before you go camping, you’re better off starting with some skills, and equipment. The skills and equipment you bring beforehand, are not the same as the camping trips you use them for. Your personal framework, like camping skills and equipment, is the foundation that enables you to get out there, and actually enjoy the trips.
And just like the test of a good tent is whether it keeps you dry in a drenching rain, the test of a solid personal framework is whether it keeps you feeling more peaceful and calm when it’s crunch time.
When things get unusually busy, do the decisions you’ve written down, and act on, give you the confidence of knowing that you are not just getting things done, but getting the right things done?
And even more importantly, does it give you the confidence of knowing what you can safely ignore for now? If you know what actually needs to get done, AND what you can ignore, that leads to inner peace when things get extra busy.
Right now, my own personal framework is getting tested. It’s my busiest time of year at work: essentially my routine workload doubles. Plus our social activities are picking up, with the easing of the pandemic. Plus we’re traveling more, and having more visitors overnighting with us. We’re getting a major repair at the house, which means lots of disruption. (I thought this repair would be done later this year. Nope! It’s now!) Some predictably unpredictable things also came up at work. (I know they will come up, and I need to stay available for them; I just never know exactly when).
The guiding phrase, the linchpin phrase that guides my thinking about my life, is that I want to be a person of peace, I want to be unhurried — even during unusually busy times.
I wanna be like Buddha Cat.
So the real test of my personal framework is this: when I follow the decisions I wrote down in times of peace and calm, do they help me to be an unhurried person, a person of peace, even when things are unusually busy? Happily, the answer is “yes” - it’s helping me feel less overwhelmed, not more so.
A Functional Personal Framework is Humane and Realistic
Let’s say I set up a personal framework for myself and it’s too demanding; I was too ambitious, or too hard on myself. Let’s say I went overboard on my values statements and expectations of myself: I’m expecting myself to be a plaster saint, not a real human being. Or let’s say when I wrote down the routines and practices I want to abide by, I’m expecting myself to turn into a competitive athlete; or expecting my house to look like a magazine photo. (Nope, and nope.)
The key to this helping you out, instead of making things worse, is to make sure your personal framework is humane and realistic. If it isn’t, revise it until it’s truly liveable and sustaining for you.
When Benedict of Nursia wrote the document that became the Rule of St. Benedict, which allowed early monastic communities to come together as the Roman Empire collapsed, his first principle was to make it humane and realistic. This is why monastic communities still live by updated versions of it, and why individuals still read it, for spiritual and life and even corporate managerial guidance 1,500 years later.
One of my projects on this blog is to see what we as individuals can do, that does for us what a humane and realistic rule of life does for a monastic community, or what a three-ring binder and index cards did for the housing co-op I lived in. (This is what I’m calling a “personal framework.”)
What decisions for ourselves can we write down, to rely on later, when it’s crunch time?
If you make some decisions ahead of time about what is important to your well-being as a person, both the big-picture things (your values) and the little things that keep the lights on (your routines and practices; your personal policies), you can thrive when things get busy rather than feeling overwhelmed and depressed.
If, instead, you’re trying to abide by a framework that makes you feel worse, that makes you feel inadequate, stressed, and even further behind, then that tells you it needs to be revised. Regard this as an ongoing personal experiment.
After my own experiments with making a liveable personal framework for myself, I’m now able to lean on it for focus and support. I can look at my pre-made decisions, and I know what I need to do, and — most importantly right now! — I also know what I can safely ignore until things settle down.
Here, specifically, are the pre-made decisions in my personal framework that are really helping me right now:
I wrote down some things about the kind of person I want to be: my values. This is helping because it guides me to understand my true physical and emotional limits. *looks around, whispers* I don’t get road rage. I get self-checkout machine rage. A few weeks ago, I threw a tantrum at a self-checkout kiosk at the grocery store. Since one of my values is to treat both myself and others with respect, that means not polluting the emotional atmosphere for myself and others around me, by slamming bags down and muttering R-rated words at a beeping screen. Yeah, I got some side-eye that afternoon… told you it was a tantrum. I feel a little embarrassed about that, but mostly, I feel like I could have had a much nicer afternoon, if I had taken better care of myself beforehand. Since this is NOT the kind of person I want to be, I made a note of that in my values review. This was an excellent reminder to respect my own limits. I have to get enough sleep. If I’m not rested, I’m not patient. I have to remember to eat, too. If I’m hangry, I’m not patient. Simple as that. To be the kind of person I want to be, I must respect my real-life physical and emotional limits.
I wrote down some things about my productivity practices. These are the things I do to organize myself at work. It’s the framework for my productivity: it’s not the goals and projects I have at work, it’s the consistent practices I do to stay organized, and keep myself intellectually refreshed and emotionally available in a job that calls on me for both. Specifically, I do weekly and daily reviews. I don’t hard-schedule more than 2/3 of my time (this allows me to respond to emergencies when they happen; on slower weeks, it allows me to catch up with admin). I map out my work hours so that when I’m working a lot of evenings, I don’t inadvertently give myself twelve or sixteen hour days. I practice closed-list productivity, and I set a quitting time.
I wrote down some things about my constants and variables. Your constants are the things you do, that give you energy and hope. In a sense they’re routines; but they are the routines that you know will help you feel better. Some of mine are creative practices, like writing early in the morning. Some of mine are self-care practices, like doing some yoga and getting out for a brisk walk every day. Some of mine are household chores, that, when they are done, make me feel better about my home environment, like emptying the household trash on a regular basis. (Overflowing trash cans depress me very much; so I get after that one. Dust bunnies don’t bother me much, so I’ll get to those… in May? Maybe?)
There is something magical about writing things down.
When you write down, review, and engage with the decisions you make about your life, that written record becomes a dialogue, a conversation between the person you are now, and the person you were in times of peace and calm, who noted down some helpful personal guidelines.
My personal framework is becoming for me a coach, a conversation partner, a guide, a counselor. And for sure, it’s what is allowing me to stay more peaceful during my crunch time right now.
References
Kleymann, B. and Malloch, H. (2010) ‘The Rule of Saint Benedict and Corporate Management: Employing the Whole Person.’, Journal of Global Responsibility, 1, pp. 207–224. doi:10.1108/20412561011079362. (Accessed 31 March 2022)
Wood-Tikchik State Park brochure: http://dnr.alaska.gov/parks/maps/wtcbrochure06.pdf (Pro tip: bring DEET.) (Accessed 31 March 2022)
Is Being ‘Hangry’ Really a Thing ― or Just an Excuse? (2021) Cleveland Clinic. Available at: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-being-hangry-really-a-thing-or-just-an-excuse/ (Accessed: 31 March 2022).