Power down.
Lately, at around 4 in the evening, every evening, my brain sends me an urgent message. “Can’t hang, need rest.” At first, I rejected this wholeheartedly. I am superhuman, I need not rest, just training, cookies and a few other things that don’t include sleeping.
And then I would take the ferry home after work and promptly pass out with my face on the wall, table, my hand, or nothing at all to the amusement of everyone around me. I once fell asleep standing up, held up by the wall and a conveniently placed fire hydrant. I’ve even tested the water repellent claims of my phone by accidentally falling asleep and drooling on it. Neato.
What’s going on here?
When you’ve got a sport that’s actually three sports, a job, and a compulsion to be a human who has actual relationships with other humans, it’s easy to be pulled in lots of directions while actually not committing to any of them at all.
You can go to dinner and be on your phone as much as you are talking to the person in front of you. You can be on the trainer while scrolling through Instagram. You can be at work and thinking about, well anything but work. And then you feel burned out while not doing anything really impactful.
So to fight that tendency like a honey badger, I’ve been pretty purposeful about thinking through things and trying to invest my energy, carefully, in what I am choosing to do every day.
What does that look like?
Don’t get me wrong, I still write my swimsets on receipts that I’m 86% sure that I won’t need again and walk into my cabinet doors that I forget to close. But at the very least, I can look at my scratchy third grader penmanship on my to-do list and remind myself what I need/want to get done for that day.
That means when I’m doing something, I really f*cking doing it. At swim, when my mind wonders (frequent), or I want to get out of the pool (also frequent) I have made a concentrated effort to be present by focusing on particular things in my stroke or just breathing.
When I’m riding outside, I push and relax based on what my body or the plan demands. And when I run, I’m trying not to fret about pace, emails, or the state of humanity. Shockingly, this takes energy and more effort to do and my body has started to demand a daily reboot to handle it.
Has it helped?
Turns out that my mind is more susceptible to distractions when I’m tired. If I ignore the power down request, I’ll find myself zombie-scrolling in my car for 5 minutes before bringing the groceries in. It makes me feel really great about myself...
Since I’ve started sleeping more and really giving a sh*t about the smaller number of things, I’m crushing harder workouts, showing up big time for the people that matter, and making a bigger impact at work. I’m less distracted; just this very minute a woman with red, glittery plastic clogs walked by and I managed to not be wholly distracted by their amazingness.
Why? How? I just woke up from my nap.
I’m not too bothered by the fact that said nap was helmet-on, open-mouthed and drooling on the Ferry. Imma do me, get my ZZZs, and have enough energy not to spend my night blankly staring at a screen. How about you?