Step 3 in undoing burnout and anxiety: Creating habits and boundaries around the things that matter to you
How do we build more self-care routines into our daily and weekly life?
[This is a continuation of my series about overcoming burnout/anxiety with detailed thoughts about step 1 and 2 here and here]
Many people with anxiety (myself included) get stuck in this cycle of doing things that aren’t necessarily furthering their values in life. Telling themselves things like… I need to work my ass off until the weekend / holiday / my next vacation, I need to do all these things for my family because who else is going to do it, I need to clean the house because it’s a mess, etc. Sound familiar?
To break that cycle, I’ve found that it’s critical to regularly start doing things throughout the day and week that energize you and ladder to what’s most important to you. So that you’re not just waiting until (or longing for) your next break or vacation. Like I was a year and a half ago when I had extreme anxiety about work. This is ultimately the key to getting out of the hamster wheel of dread and spiraling anxiety (about work or anything else). Work is pretty low on my list of values, and there are definitely times at work that require more investment. But it’s not sustainable if working/thinking about work around the clock is the status quo.
It’s taken me a few months to revisit this series, but here I am. Ready to revisit ideas on how to create habits around activities that will make your life feel more fulfilling. And balanced. A big reason why it’s taken me so long to write this article is that I’ve had to personally go through my own process of getting back into a groove, engaging in habits and routines that serve me. I started a new job in mid-March; and it disrupted a lot of my personal routines of self-care that I had established. Now, I’ve been in my role for 6 months. In the past few months, I’ve finally gotten a bit closer to re-establishing some updated (and new) routines that help me have balance on an everyday basis.
Anchor on your values and activities that can ladder to it
Over the last few months, I revisited my values (e.g. what facets in life are meaningful to me). High values for me were parenting/marriage/personal growth/family and hobbies, lower ones were work and physical wellbeing. These continued to stay relatively steady, but because I started a new job earlier in the year, my previous routines were disrupted because I was spending more time onboarding and generally doing work (a lower overall “value” to me but a needed one to make money/support my family), leaving less time for everything else. My goal was to get back to a state where I was doing more in service of more meaningful priorities.
Starting to build the habit
In this post, I had a brainstormed list of ideas (small, medium, and large) that served each of my values. And I generally knew what activities would fill my cup.
So the task at hand was to regularly start doing things throughout the day and week that energized me and laddered to what’s most important to me. So that I wasn’t depleting my energy throughout the week, just waiting until the next vacation or break that I had. I wanted to have things to regularly look forward to and re-energize me when I’ve had a tiring day or week.
There are so many books about building habits. I am far from being an expert habit builder. But I wanted to share an account of how I got myself into a rhythm and momentum of doing activities that filled my cup.
Here are some of the steps I took to try to build a habit:
Reflect on an average day
Are there times throughout the day that you feel are not well spent? Or time that’s draining (and truthfully less productive) that maybe you could start to use in different ways?
At the peak of my anxiety, I admittedly was not using my time wisely and in a way that laddered to my values. For example, at night, I’d often sit around, not really doing much, letting Sunday scaries about work the next day overwhelm me. Other nights, I’d passively watch a lot of TV, which was semi-relaxing but not super energizing. During the day, I’d sit at my desk all day (even during meetings where I didn’t need to contribute much), trying to catch up on work, and not taking a true break for myself.
I asked myself - are there other ways I can spend this time (either nights or downtimes during the workday), partaking in activities/routines that are healthier?
Start small
I’m going to use my value of “Physical Wellbeing/Health” as an example of something I wanted to work on. Admittedly, this is fairly low on my list of values. But it was an underserved need of mine, and I always felt proud of myself for making healthy choices. So I wanted to find ways to better integrate it into my day or week.
Looking at my list of possible activities in service of “Physical Wellbeing”, there were a few ideas. I could go for a hike or out to an exercise class. Since those are fairly time-consuming, I focused on the small/medium ideas on my list, which included a short walk or Peloton workout. I decided to focus on Peloton workouts (starting with 20-minute ones) since I wouldn’t need to leave my house to work out, and they offered a range of options.
Try to repeat the activity, and set a realistic, target cadence (ideally a specific time of day to engage in the activity so it can be a bit more predictable). If you manage to repeat an activity, be proud of your progress, whatever it might be.
For me, I wanted to do 2 Peloton workouts/week. Some weeks, I did 2 workouts a week; some weeks I only did one. But hey, that was more than I was doing before. So I tried to be proud of myself for my overall progress and didn’t let that stop me from continuing to push on and develop the habit.
Observe how it makes you feel (after doing it a few times - does it make you feel good? Meh?) and adjust accordingly.
I quickly realized that I felt really proud of myself after doing a Peloton workout, but I didn’t love it enough to do it 2-3x/week. So I adjusted my target to doing a Peloton workout once/week, which still felt great.
Try to keep doing it, even if it’s hard sometimes, but also give yourself grace.
Some days, weeks, or seasons will be busier, testing your ability to maintain the habit. For me, some days, I really just didn’t feel like I had time for a 20-minute workout. So I did a quicker 10-minute one instead, even when I had meetings to prep for.
Every time I pushed through the discomfort/inconvenience, I never regretted taking a break from work to take care of myself. I usually went back to work a tiny bit more refreshed and confident, feeling like I can tackle other challenges.
Before you know it, you will have done things a few times and created a little (or big) habit!
I went from not doing a single Peloton workout in 2021 to having a 25-week workout streak in 2022. Not bad! Sure, sometimes my workout was just a 10-minute ride. I think I cheated with a stretch one week… But I was still doing something for myself. And that was way more than I did previously.
Building multiple habits and changing my routines
Using the framework above and expanding it across more activities, here’s how my days and routines changed:
Routines/habits when I had high anxiety:
A lot of my time in the past was spent working, barely doing anything for myself besides some time with family and passively watching TV.
Routines/habits when I addressed my anxiety and re-evaluated my priorities:
After re-evaluating my values and acknowledging that parenting/marriage/personal growth/family and hobbies were priorities to me, I introduced more activities (that eventually became routines) in service of those values into my day and week.
Below are some examples of how I make use of the same time now. Developing these routines did not happen overnight (and also involved addressing my anxieties in parallel). Slowly using the framework above, I was able to make many of these into more regular habits and routines.
By developing these self-care routines, they helped me further my values and gave me regular things to look forward to. They provided balance throughout the workday, helping me manage my anxiety levels even during more stressful days or periods.
Drawing boundaries to keep your routines
Finally, making routines needs to go hand in hand with drawing boundaries to protect these commitments. Otherwise, it’s so easy to have other things creep up and violate the time you should be able to spend on your priorities.
If you’re like me, boundaries can often be nonexistent due to guilt of prioritizing yourself over others or your perception that it’s impossible to have boundaries (because they’ve been violated in the past). Last year I read a great book called “Permission to Come Home” by Jenny Wang that talks about reclaiming mental health as Asian Americans. It dives into the mental health effects that many deeply rooted Asian cultural narratives have resulted in. I’m sure the book would resonate with many other cultures as well. In reading this book, I realized that my upbringing led me to have many false perceptions (disguised as facts) about things like boundaries. One of the false perceptions I had growing up and mentioned in the book was that boundaries were “disrespectful and selfish. Self-sacrifice for the collective benefit is viewed as the honorable and dutiful path”. So I’d often (and still subconsciously) sacrifice my own time to do things to take care of others.
In reality, boundaries are a way to invest in yourself. To show yourself and others that you also matter. And as a result, we often have more to give to others. I love this excerpt from the book:
“Holding our boundaries becomes an act of self-love, reinforcing to ourselves that we are worth protecting and our resources are valuable. Boundaries show others that we believe we have value too.”
It’s not easy, especially when so many boundaries have fallen in the past. But I have found by defining them, communicating them to others, and reinforcing them repeatedly - it gets easier to maintain them over time.
Some of the boundaries I put up to protect the routines above:
Morning
I have a block on my work calendar till 9am or 9:30 so that I can use that time before to get Mara ready for school, do something small for me, and get ready for the day.
I used to check work during this time. The context-switching between work, Mara, work before was exhausting. Now, unless there’s something urgent, I try to figure it out once I’ve done all the important things in the morning like drop Mara off for school. Some days, I’m scrambling but I’ve built confidence over time that I usually can figure things out without having to start work at an earlier time.
Afternoon
I also have a block on my calendar after 4pm, so that I don’t have to take meetings (unless something is extremely urgent, which is rare). That gives me time to wind down from work / catch up on emails, prep dinner, transition from work to personal life, and pick up Mara if I need to from school.
If someone asks me if I can meet after 4, I often ask if it can wait for another day. If it can’t, depending on the gravity of the meeting, I’ll still sometimes tell them I need to miss the meeting to pick up Mara. And to catch me up later.
If you’re curious if there have been any major ramifications due to my boundaries at work, no, there haven’t been. See my reflection of how I experimented with my effort at work.
Night
One of my smallest (but very treasured) bit of self-care is a 10-20 minute break after dinner to take a shower, when Tommy watches Mara on his own before her bedtime. It’s been 2.5 years of this, and every day I still look forward to taking this shower and having some time to myself to decompress from the day, so that I’m refreshed before Mara’s bedtime. He knows it’s important to me, so he always makes sure to factor this into his day.
Tommy and I love watching TV together, but sometimes I find myself mindlessly watching TV when there are other things that would probably be more energizing to me. Now, depending on the day, I try to set a boundary of only watching TV for about an hour, so that I also have time to do other things that bring me joy (like writing/journaling or watching BTS/style content, while Tommy also gets to catch up on things he enjoys or needs to do).
The result? Much more balance.
By regularly investing in things that matter to me and drawing boundaries to respect them, I’ve been able to do more and make more progress in areas that are aligned with my values. Once I did this in earnest, I wasn’t spending all my time and mental energy on work and parenting anymore. I still spend quite a bit of time on those activities (working because I have to, and parenting because I have to and want to), but I am also regularly honoring other things that matter to me. So that whenever I encounter something stressful, I have gratitude for other things in my life that are going well.
Things always ebb and flow, but in the grand scheme of things, if you can regularly take care and invest in yourself, it truly makes life so much more balanced and enriching.
In one of my next posts, I’ll conclude with the final step of helping me overcome burnout and manage my anxiety levels, learning to let go of control of some things in life. I’m a recovering control freak, so that should be a fun one to write about…