Dealing with feelings of stagnation and lack of progress

Redefining what success looks like and allowing myself time to adjust / reevaluate my priorities

Ever feel lost/anxious because you don’t feel like you’re progressing? Ever since starting my new job last month, I’ve been feeling a bit off. It’s manifested in the form of some anxiety and disappointment in myself for not doing enough. It’s been manageable, but it hasn’t felt great. Don’t get me wrong - the new job itself has actually been wonderful. But it’s also been a big change that has impacted my daily/weekly rhythm and challenged my own expectations of what I should be getting done every week, leaving me feeling a bit unaccomplished the past month. 

Why do I feel like I’m not progressing?

I didn’t enjoy my old job, but it was predictable. I knew what to expect. I had figured out a routine to it. It drained me, but I had learned to weave in non-work activities to re-energize me. Now, I’m figuring out a new job, ramping up but not quite making an impact yet, and still learning what the expectations are. Because of the increased time I’ve spent on that, it has disrupted my personal life flow. I’ve had less time and energy to write, journal, tidy the home, meal prep, etc. Thankfully, I’ve still managed to carve out time for parental and marriage priorities like taking Mara to school, having dinner as a family, and the occasional date night. But overall, I’ve felt less accomplished because I’m not actively contributing to many projects at work yet and personally, I haven’t been as productive in doing things around the home, for myself or for my family. I’ve been making lazier dinners at home (definitely using more frozen foods…), our home feels messier than usual, I’ve fallen behind on specific posts I’ve been wanting to share here, and more. After Mara goes to bed every night, I’ve defaulted to doing more passive things like watch TV and BTS videos, as I fumble around trying to find a new rhythm of balancing work and life. 

I still have monthly therapy (and now personal coaching as well, as a continued investment in my own self-improvement), so I used them as opportunities to get a third party perspective. I’ve also tried to diagnose my anxiety (around not getting as many things done) by doing my A-B-Cs (reminder about the A-B-C framework in this post) to identify the feelings and beliefs driving it and slowly take steps to overcome them. As a result of my conversations (with my therapist and coach) and doing my A-B-Cs, here are the two main things I’m working on to combat feelings of stagnation: (1) trying to reframe what success and progress looks like to me and (2) giving myself space and time to get accustomed to a change in my life (eg. new job) and eventually use information about my “new normal” to reevaluate my values/priorities in life (if needed, see my latest values/priorities in this post).

Breaking down #1: Trying to reframe/augment my definition of success and progress

My brain seems to be trained to think of success as “accomplishments”. What did I accomplish today or this week? What did I check off my to-do list? What milestone have I hit? My therapist pointed out that this thinking can be motivating but can also quickly become biased. What do I mean by that? E.g. Something that originally was, “I need to do XYZ” (which could be a motivating reason to do something) could quickly become a negative, biased thought like, “I’m not capable of doing XYZ” or “I’m a failure if I don’t do XYZ” if I don’t get something done. If you’re interested in seeing common cognitive distortions and biases, check out a sample list here. 

To move away from thinking about successes in traditional achievements-based ways, my coach encouraged me to redefine success in less binary (did you do something or did you not), additive ways. Practically speaking, most of my goals to-date have been task-oriented like sharing pre-planned mental health posts (according to a roadmap I had for myself), leading/delivering tangible projects at work, cooking varied meals for my family throughout the week, tidying up the house, etc. Looking at my progress through that lens, I’ve felt behind because I haven’t been completing as many tasks as I used to (prior to switching jobs). So instead of just having these task-oriented types of goals, are there less binary, yet still additive ways that I could define progress for myself? For example, because I started a new job, I haven’t led any projects yet. I’ve felt lower confidence in my abilities and it’s taking me longer to ingest and process the overwhelming amount of new information during meetings. With that in mind, could I start thinking of my progress as softer milestones like a decrease in the questions I have for other people (due to an increased level of comfort with the team), my growing knowledge of different team members/names, familiarity with terms/concepts that I didn’t understand the week prior, and an overall increase in confidence? On the personal front, I had strived to write a 5-part series of Substack posts to share my experiences about anxiety/burnout. I haven’t gotten around to completing that yet, but can I think about my success as the flexibility to pivot and write something new that wasn’t in my plan (like this post and last week’s post)? And could I chip away at my perfectionist tendencies by trying to reduce the amount of time it takes for me to share something here?

Augmenting my original goals with these softer but equally meaningful ideas around progress has felt more comforting. It’s given me alternative ways of thinking about success other than whether or not I “accomplished” a specific task. 

Breaking down #2: Giving myself time to figure out my new situation and eventually using what I learn to reevaluate my priorities

This one has been extremely uncomfortable for me. I know it’s unreasonable to think I’d adapt to a new job so quickly (especially when my new job has been a slight career shift into a new type of role from what I’ve been doing the past 10 years) and not have it impact any other parts of my life. But I think a lot of my discomfort is due to my overachieving nature and my innate desire to control things in my life, trying to effect ideal outcomes as much as I can and make shit happen. I probably had pretty unrealistic expectations going into this life change, expecting that I’d figure out work and still be able to maintain all my personal routines. And because this hasn’t quite happened yet, I’ve been feeling a bit like a failure because of it.

But am I really a failure for not figuring out everything about my new job and how to balance motherhood, family, and myself in the past 3-4 weeks? No, that thought is pretty extreme; it would take most human beings more than a month to figure it out.  

So this past week, I’ve been trying to push through the discomfort of not having my rhythm of work and life figured out and trying to be kinder to myself during this time of fact-finding and adjustment to my new job (while testing out how to balance my personal priorities). I’m not sure how long this process will take me, but I’m going to keep trying to allow myself space and time to do this. And in the TBD future, once I have enough inputs about my “new normal”, I’m going to use that information to reevaluate my priorities / routines (which I had previously established here) to see if anything needs to change (or not).

Concluding my thoughts with where I’m at now

I don’t have everything figured out, and I’m very much navigating change, anxiety and the feeling of stagnation as I speak. But I wanted to share my process and the strategies/perspectives that are helping me in case anyone else is going through similar struggles. For me, having these approaches to deal with my feelings of stagnation and anxiety has made me feel a bit more at ease. And reframing what constitutes “success” has given me the optimism that I’m still making progress even when things seem muddy and unclear.