In the past few months, I have been going through an extremely hectic time professionally. In addition to my additional work as a life design coach and investing time in this project that I love, my day job is as a product manager. Due to changes in the organization, I have to support two teams simultaneously for a period.
Considering that we have to ensure 99.98% availability for our product, the pressure is constant. The activities during the day are multiple: customer management, providing answers to various questions from customers or colleagues, and analyzing the functionalities to be developed.
At some point, I felt like I just didn’t feel like it anymore. The quick transitions from one topic to another and from one meeting to another made me wonder at the end of the day, “What did I accomplish today?”. It seemed like things never ended and I felt exhausted and not in the mood at the end of each day.
By paying attention to my moods, I noticed that these feelings did not go away. I’ve felt this way before, but usually before the holidays and it didn’t last long. But now, the lack of mood seemed to not go away.
I did not rush to conclusions. I wrote down every day what displeased me. It turned out that everything was fast forward, I seemed to get nothing done, there were many things left to work on, and at the end of the day I felt guilty, plus a state of dissatisfaction and frustration. I couldn’t relax with my family or work on the project in peace.
I was lucky to meet a friend who has a 3-year-old boy. She was attentive to her child as she moved from one activity to another. It offered him a transition period between activities, a time when he calmly and gently guided him from one activity to another. And I remembered this technique that I also applied to my child when he was younger, just to calm him down.
That’s how I started to redraw the days especially the way I close each working day.
In life design, 3 coaching questions to explore lack of desire are:
- What makes you feel like you’re not in the mood?
- How does the lack of mood manifest itself in your daily activities?
- When did you start feeling low?
In addition to these questions, I invite you to apply the 15-minute transition technique. How about applying this technique to your children as well? Maybe not after every single activity, but at least at the end of the work day.
How do you create the 15-minute transition technique?
- Schedule in the calendar 15 minutes before the end of the work schedule.
- Be consistent and stick to this break daily to make it a consistent habit.
- Write down what you managed to do throughout that day. It will help you appreciate yourself, realize how many things you have already done, and mentally close the day.
- Analyze what you failed to do by the end of the day and prioritize those things for the next day.
When you feel a constant lack of mood and frustration of going from one activity to another without a break, this technique will help you get mental clarity and calm you down. you will become more aware of what you achieve daily and your self-esteem will no longer suffer.
Probably an even more effective technique for well-being is to have at least 10 minutes of transition between daily activities or sessions. 10 minutes of analysis, connecting to the next activity. I still haven’t managed to implement it, I have days when I go from one session to another, without a break. But I’m not giving up, I’ll let you know when I succeed.
Try the 15-minute transition technique and write to me if you notice changes in your mood level and also in your self-esteem. I am very curious.
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With love, Raluca ❤️
