"I Need to Accomplish Something"

Do you have trouble taking a day off? Boy, I do. When I take a day off I lie around all day, read novels, eat whatever I want, take a nap, and generally do whatever I want. It’s awful. I get depressed, I don’t feel well, I don’t accomplish anything.

Did you catch that last phrase? “I don’t accomplish anything.” Well, of course not, it’s a DAY OFF. But do you ever feel that way? That you should be accomplishing something even when you’ve told yourself and others that you’re taking a day off?

Do you work on weekends? Evenings? Do you eat at your desk? I do all those things, sometimes. And what it means for me when I’m doing those things is that I’m “out of balance.”

Now, balance for me may not look like what it looks like for you. That’s another article entirely, one I haven’t had time to write yet. But what balance looks like for me is basically that I can lie down and read a book or sit on the couch with my husband and watch a movie without feeling like I “should be accomplishing something.”

It’s that simple. For me, anyway. I don’t always have to be accomplishing something. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to be at loose ends, it’s okay to enjoy a novel rather than studying or reading a heavy non-fiction tome. It’s even okay to play a computer game.

Where I get in trouble is when I go to the other end of the spectrum, usually because I’m depressed or discouraged, and spend all my time reading novels or playing computer games. Again, that’s another article.

But my point, and yes, I do indeed have one, is that it’s OKAY to take a break. You don’t need to be accomplishing something every minute of every day. I once told a very wise woman that I just had so much to do, I didn’t know how I was going to get it all done, and I was stressed beyond belief. She looked me deep in the eyes, nodded, and said, “Do you have a trashy novel?” She then offered to lend me one if I didn’t, so I could go home, spend the afternoon reading it, and get up refreshed to do the things that needed to be done.

Downtime is essential if you’re going to accomplish the right things. You can’t run on adrenaline indefinitely. It will catch up with you, and you’ll get a cold, strain a muscle, or worse.

So don’t worry about accomplishing anything for a few hours today. Go read a trash novel. I have a pretty good one you can borrow if you’d like.