Stewardship of yourself

In November 2021 I drew an analogy between ourselves and how non-profit organizations engage in stewardship of their resources in order to not only fulfill their mission today, but also in a year or 10 years (something I studied in my dissertation).

We are no different. Whatever our role, if we burn ourselves out today, if we don’t take time off to recover, we are unlikely to be doing this same mission in 10 years. We need to take time to take stock, to reset.

Let’s be clear – self-care activities don’t solve complexity, and the time away can be insufficient depending on the depth of injury. Yet sometimes a little time off to step away from email and work, to invest a bit in replenishment activities like exercise, meditation, acupuncture, therapy, and journaling, might be enough to give bandwidth to continue finding ways to step away and de-escalate amid the usual work days.

For me, this stewardship involves regularly (~quarterly) decompressing and re-establishing the boundaries and daily and weekly practices that sustain me but that often get jettisoned in times of high work volume and stress.

Then there’s the periodic reflecting on whether this work I am attempting is still a good fit for my values, season of life, and preferences. If there are parts of my portfolio that are a good fit, can sub-optimal activities be stopped or handed off to another?

Is the work environment still fertile ground, or should I consider a change? It’s important to assessing whether the culture and structure of our professional environments are reasonable or if they lead to individuals attempting to fill cracks in a damn with their fingers and toes. In my reflections, I often discover that though the environment encourages overwork, it accepts balance too, and my overwork is a bad habit that requires counteracting.