Welcome to the field!

Back in June, I wrote about my experience of mornings where I felt like I was following the pace and priorities that I wanted in my life. Time with my wife, time to garden, time to rest. That was the plan I was living by. This month is a field report on how that's been going — and it's not so pretty.

Here's what slipped. I had a lot of family caregiving duties; I got a cold; and I made the decision to launch a significant new digital product while continuing to publish two newsletters and stay active on LinkedIn and Substack. Not exactly the portfolio of someone slowing down.

The pattern I noticed about myself is an old one. I get excited by a lot of things (I'm a generalist by my family medicine training and in the way I approach the world), and I follow my interests where they take me. That's exciting and fun —and it's not always sustainable.

You'd think at this age I would have figured this out by now. But I keep walking down the same street and tripping on the same tree root in the sidewalk — every time. Because I'm human.

What am I doing about it?

Well, like any other recovery process, the most important part of putting things back together is to admit the problem. I've been doing things that matter, but trying to do them all at once. The priorities aren't wrong, but the pacing is.

In a season of caregiving or being under the weather (things none of us can plan for), tasks like launching a new product could go on hold. And my writing could slow down.

My wife tried to tell me. My friends tried to tell me. And I kept pushing through.

That's actually the pattern — I've been raised (Midwestern, Protestant work ethic), and trained (medicine, academia) to just keep going, even in the face of my own illness or fatigue. That's what trips me up, and it's what I need to take a hard look at now.

My core assumptions about how I should manage my time and energy are tightly woven into my personal and professional identity. It's tough to examine them and even harder to change them. But that, my reader friends, is the work of this season of life, I think. Here's what's guiding me:

1. Question everything and write new operating rules for the situation in which I find myself.
2. Be realistic about the finitude of my own time and energy in a way that my training and upbringing never allowed.
3. Give myself lots of grace — I've never done this season of life, nor this set of challenges!
4. And because it really matters: listen to those who love me when they tell me to take care of myself. They are right.

Why am I sharing this?

I promised you that this newsletter would be a place I told you about what I am learning, both in my own life and from my clients. This story is pretty personal, but I'm not bringing it to you for a therapy session.

I suspect many of you have hit a place like this yourself. I won't presume, but if you have, it may help to know that we all carry patterns like this. Questioning them — and changing how you work because of the answers — takes a real growth mindset, which I know many of you practice.

I'm also sharing this because I'm curious what others are learning about questioning their own assumptions, and about the limits to time and energy at this time in the world, and in your own lives. I'd love to hear from you.

The Meaning Plan

Over the last few weeks, I began a series of articles on Substack that add up to what I'm calling "The Meaning Plan."

What I began in June, before I even had a name for it, was essentially a plan for how I wanted these ostensibly slower days to go, and what had meaning for me inside them.

I had done my list of the top five things that mattered to me, and every one of them began with the word "time." I was resting. Gardening, though I'd be ashamed to post a picture of my garden right now (it's been a rough summer heat-wise, and my neglect of the dear plants shows). Playing with the dogs, and taking slow mornings over coffee with my wife. I'm still doing some of that, but the rhythm got upended.

In my Substack series, I'm writing about how to craft a Meaning Plan, and if that interests you, you can find the first article here and the others as they come out here. It's all about planning at the pinnacle of your career — to ensure what you want next is in place when you're ready for it.

I know that many of us find our best-laid plans falling apart at times. I'll close with a quote my wife sent me in the midst of the toughest part of the last month. It helped. I hope it helps you.

Drop me a note in reply if you have tips or suggestions — I'll collect them and share them back to the community (without identifiers) if you do.

Till next month…

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