I heard it a lot growing up. Maybe it was because of when I grew up. Maybe it was where I grew up. I am sure many of you also heard it passed down. It is THE phrase/pillow/sampler/wall-hanging of the Puritan Work Ethic – “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground”. It was frowned upon to not be doing something productive at all times. If you wanted to sit on the porch and enjoy the evening air, that was fine, but do something productive too. Read the newspaper. Shell peas. Read a book. Work on a craft or sewing project. Whittle. Something.
This quote also hits hard because we were all taught that it is Biblical Instruction. It is in Proverbs. Well, sort of; it is translated that way in one translation of the Bible:
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece.
Proverbs 16:27-29 (Living Bible)
An evil man sows strife; gossip separates the best of friends.
Wickedness loves company—and leads others into sin.
No other translation renders this verse like this. You can do your own cross-reference; for the 10 or so that I looked at, Verse 27 talks about man digging up evil. Very different conceptually. Regardless, I have been ingrained to be uncomfortable just sitting still. I have to be accomplishing something – not just busy, but actually have something to show for the 24 hours of life I had been allotted that day.
Add to that training, the 90’s Efficiency Movement. This is the Puritan Work Ethic on speed. I was in my 30’s, in the blossoming of my corporate career, when Corporate America embraced Steven R. Covey and Franklin Quest, and later in the 90’s, the conglomerate that came of their merger – FranklinCovey. In case you were not fortunate enough to have been through all of the training seminars, audiobooks and laminated charts and mottos, FranklinCovey championed Efficiency Optimization through several of their books/programs like “The 7 habits of Highly-Effective People”. This training taught us tricks and tips to ensure that not a minute of your day was “wasted”. Do you have 10 minutes between meetings? Perfect time to check email! Do you have a commute? Books on tape can take advantage of this time AND free up the time you would have spent reading. Add to this the emergence of the mobile phones and BlackBerry for the Corporate America crowd and we could be productive every minute of every day. I remember some folks even championing listening to books on tape while you slept!
Another feature of the FranklinCovey program was the 2×2 grid of how we spend our time – Urgent/Not Urgent by Important/Not Important. We spent time daily making to-do lists and prioritizing each and every item. I had actually started a routine to-do list item to create my to-do list. These lists were catalogued in our Franklin Planner. All of us had one. The lists were designed to roll over to the next day if you did not get to everything… and you didn’t… ever. Your goal was to come up with everything that could/should be done and then to concentrate on the Urgent/Important items first. Then later, we were taught that if you managed your list well, nothing ever became Urgent – you should have handled it before it became Urgent. Urgent was for those things that you overlooked that were now taking your focus away from the things you should be doing. I think the summary of all of their products and mottos would boil down to Be Productive – Every. Single. Second. Of. Every. Day.
But Grief doesn’t work like that. No matter how hard we try. There is no planning. Grief rolls over us however and whenever it does, on its terms. I tried, for years, to schedule some time for it. On my schedule. I had so much stuff to accomplish that was – to use the FranklinCovey terminology – Urgent/Important. (Read the blog post about Budgeting your Time after losing your Spouse.) My to-do list was too full already. Where could I possibly pencil-in “Grieve”?
Then COVID-19 happened. I have been working from home since mid-March, so I did not have a significant amount of my day suddenly become available. Maybe an hour a day – 20 minutes of commute time each way, and time getting “really dressed” in the morning (vs. work-from-home-casual). But what did happen, was suddenly so many things on my to-do lists were not possible because everything was closed, locked down. This was no fault of my own. Things had to be postponed due to outside forces beyond my control. I had to adjust and accept what is the current situation. Some things just had to wait.
Why, oh why, was I unable to do that in the thick of grief? Grief was (and is) both an external and internal force outside of my control. Widow-brain is real. So are a myriad of other biochemical and physical reactions to grief. Grief has to be embraced to work through it. I routinely tell people this. You can’t just stuff it in a closet and hope it will go away. But it also doesn’t conveniently fit into a prioritized to-do list scheduled in a day planner optimized to gain the ultimate in productivity and make the most of every minute in every day. Or do we need to redefine our concept of “productivity” after a major loss; maybe it was never actually a healthy definition anyway.
What are some things I would do differently based on what I know now? How can I apply them to life going forward? What can you learn from my experiences to make your grief journey more balanced?
- Redefine what the word “productive” means.
- Selfcare – like a quiet cup of coffee watching the sun rise, relaxing in a bathtub with candlelight and soft music, reading a book that has no reference to improving your career or your trade, etc. – would never make it to the Urgent/Important quadrant in the FranklinCovey Paradigm. If it made the chart and to-do list at all it would be Non-Urgent/Non-Important. But is it? And who gets to decide what your Urgent and Important tasks are? They don’t all have to be about furthering your career and/or making more money.
- Maybe a productive day is also a day spent reconnecting with yourself and/or others. A productive night is spent sleeping with the cell phone, tablet, laptop and all of your other digital-leashes powered down in another room.
- Challenge yourself for a moment – What do you define as productive? Are you ok with that definition? If not, change it.
- Reevaluate multi-tasking and also the word “Important”
- I was taught to be the queen of multitasking and I leaned heavily on that skill after Taylor died. I COULD get everything done that we both were able to accomplish. I would just have to do more things at the same time. I could also burn out and suck equally at all of those tasks instead of doing even one of them well. I have had to learn to let some things go. Some things just simply will not get done and that has to be ok.
- Think about it, if you are cooking dinner while folding laundry, listening to the news, and helping your child with homework, you aren’t Parent of the Year. You are giving your child less than one quarter of your attention. Sure, you can check off four to-do list boxes, but at what cost? “Honey you are equally important to me as laundry and listening to world-events.”
- In trying to be maximumly producing and earning, did we all lose our balance? Did we lose site of “real priorities” to become master “to-do-list-checker-offers”? I do remember, towards the end of when my employer bought me a new set of Franklin Planner pages every year, a new mini-page was introduced to enable you to plan one goal in each of several categories that were not work-related. I think the categories were like Relationship (call Mom this week), Physical (go to the gym on Tuesday), etc. Maybe we were already figuring out that balance had left our lives.
- Allow time for Urgent interruptions and handle with Grace.
- Widow-brain is real. If you are not familiar with this, it is when your brain becomes like an over-tired, hungry, and frustrated toddler. You can read the same paragraph (sentence?) 100 times and it just will not make any sense. Every letter is understandable; every word is known and comprehended. Yet the idea expressed by those letters and words is as elusive as unicorn sightings. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make it make any sense. These are also the days you mysteriously find your keys in the freezer, your glasses in the bathroom drawer. There are many ways to react to these moments – anger and grace being the two extremes. My go-to response was anger. Why can’t I get my mind to cooperate with me today? We have all seen it; that Mom throwing a temper tantrum over the fact that her toddler is throwing one. They both just need a break, and a hug, and maybe a cookie and a nap. When the Grief Monster strikes, we need to accept that we will just not accomplish everything that day could hold. (Spoiler alert – the fact that Grief Monster days result in fewer scheduled tasks being completed is a truth whether you fight it or not.) You can take a break and hug your inner-toddler or fight with him/her, but either way you ARE taking a break from what you planned to accomplish at that moment.
Please understand, I am not saying to not be efficient. There are times when multi-tasking is highly effective. Help the kids with their homework while dinner is in the oven – unattended – for an hour. Start the washer and/or dryer and let them run during the same time. Those tasks require nothing from you personally while they execute. I am still a big endorser of cooking ahead and freezing meals for during the week. Listen to an audio book on your commute… if it brings you joy and peace. Just don’t do it because the world will end if you aren’t accomplishing something during those moments. Maybe all you need to accomplish on your drive home is to clear your mind of work and open it to your evening time.
Grief takes time. It takes energy. It is often an unwelcomed interruption to our busy lives. No, we can’t call in sick every time that Grief hits, but we can consider it a possibility when it is really hard. The one that you loved so dearly has left this world. It is a good time to direct some of that love to yourself. Love yourself with the fierceness that you loved your spouse. Love yourself with all of the passion that your spouse loved you. If you feel stuck in the FranklinCovey paradigm, redefine taking care of yourself – physically, mentally, spiritually – as both Urgent and Important. If you are stuck in Puritan Work Ethic, redefine sitting quietly and doing nothing much as recharging your batteries, as healing your soul. Whatever it takes to move to grace and healing for yourself, make that happen. That is, it has to be, at the top of your to-do list.
God Provides Grace and Humor 