Category: Overachiever Confessions

The problem with streaking…

Post author By sleepyintheatl
Post date September 29, 2021
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Notice this isn’t 1352 days in a row… That’s only 12.

What do a flower and my Insight Timer data have to do with running naked through a public place? Nothing. I’m not talking about that kind of streaking, although I’ll laugh with you if that’s where your mind went.

No, I’m talking about a different kind of streak, the type that’s often tied to our devices and activities. And the one that’s like catnip for us overachieving felines. Or, well, you get the idea.

For example, I use the Insight Timer meditation app, which I love. Every day when I meditate, I get a circle. Then, when I get ten circles in a row, I get a star. Five yellow stars earn a red star, and five red stars earn a green star.

You can see how long I’ve been using the app above, for six green stars. I would have more if I hadn’t broken my streaks, most recently thirteen days ago. And–true confession–I get so pissed when I miss a day of meditation and break my streak, which, if you think about it, negates the purpose and perceived benefits of using a meditation app.

Trying to achieve streaks ties into the perfectionism part of being an overachiever. Sure, perfectionism can have its occasional benefit (see the procrastination chapter in Better Sleep for the Overachiever), but it also ends up working against us. Whether we’re going for meditation streaks, exercise rings a certain number of days in a row, or, as happens with my clients, consecutive good nights of sleep, stuff happens. Life happens. Occasional rough nights are part of the human experience.

As with almost everything, the problem with streaking comes down to mindset, or, more specifically, how we approach it. That’s where the learning and growth can happen. What keeps me going with this good habit that I can get so many days in a row (hint: routine)? What made me miss that meditation session thirteen days ago and cause my counter to reset? If it was something values-related, can I forgive myself and move on?

So maybe the thing to pay attention to is not how many days we’ve done something in a row, but how we handle it and what we can learn from it when we don’t.

What have you learned from your streaks and when you’ve broken them? Please drop a comment below. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on getting my next eight circles. 🙂

Tags better sleep for the overachiever book, meditation, mindset, perfectionism, procrastination

Overachiever Confessions

An Overachiever Does NaNoWriMo

Post author By sleepyintheatl
Post date November 18, 2020
No Comments on An Overachiever Does NaNoWriMo

Or, Oops, I did it again…

Well, it’s November, which means it’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, I don’t mean the holiday season. What are holidays in 2020, anyway? I mean National Novel Writing Month.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, which is pretty much everyone who’s not a novelist, NaNoWriMo, as those of us “in the know” call it, is a challenge to write a new 50,000 word novel in November. I sense some of you doing the math to figure out how many words that is per day, so I’ll go ahead and give it to you – 1667ish on average. For me many days it’s more. Some days it’s less.

When I told the total monthly number to my mom last year, her immediate response was, “That’s an easy month for you!” She knows me well. But I still do it because many years, like this one, I’ve burned out on writing by autumn. This is a way to get me back in gear and allow me to have a book to release early the following year.

How does that work? In order for me to get that many words per day and have a life, I need to get out of my own way and just sit down and write. This is my sixth NaNoWriMo, so I have an idea of what I need to do. Yes, the website says I’m in my third, but my first three were 2006-2008 under my Earthlink email address, which I no longer have, and I don’t remember the password. So… Yeah. Yay, technology. I didn’t finish in 2008, anyway. If you’re interested in reading the two books I wrote in 2006 and 2007, they were Tangled Dreams and Web of Truth, which got pretty much rewritten and ended up being a finalist in the 2019 Daphne du Maurier Awards, respectively.

So how am I getting in my own way this year? I decided going into November that not only would I write a novel, or finish one since I’ve been dragging my feet on The Shadowed Path, but I would do the Obe Fitness 28-day Harder AF Challenge AND take advantage of the time change to reset my circadian rhythm and finally succeed in becoming a morning person.

If you’ve read Better Sleep for the Overachiever, you know that trying to work against one’s own internal clock is really hard. I thought I had it figured out, though. With the clocks having been turned back, I’d be motivated to get up early, get at least half my words in, exercise, and force myself into a cheerful-at-6:15 a.m. persona by the end of the month.

You can probably guess how that went. My body rebelled, and on November 5, I woke with the worst migraine I have ever had. It was so bad I called out of work, which hardly ever happens. I dusted myself off, tried the next week, and crashed and burned again on Thursday, although not with a migraine, thank goodness. My body said, “no more please,” and I was exhausted all day.

In the interest of full disclosure, the workouts are hard af, and I’m definitely not doing them every day. I did the Day 10 ones yesterday, so you can see how my progress is going. I’ll be done with the workout challenge at the end of December. At least my words are going well, and I’m on track there.

As for my internal clock… I gave up yesterday and reset my alarm to be more consistent with my natural schedule.

One would think that I’d be better about piling on the commitments, but what can I say? I’m an overachiever and an achievement junkie. At least it looks like I’ll hit one out of three.

How about you? Do you tend to overcommit and overly challenge yourself? Please drop a comment and let me know.

Btw, if you’ve read Better Sleep for the Overachiever, would you mind leaving it a review on one or more of the book vendor sites? I’d really appreciate it.

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Tags achievement junkie, challenges, circadian rhythm, fitness, nanowrimo, sleep, sleep schedule, writing

Overachiever Confessions

The Overachiever Makes a Move

Post author By sleepyintheatl
Post date July 13, 2020
2 Comments on The Overachiever Makes a Move

Welcome to the Confessions of an Overachiever blog! I hope that through it, we can connect and shake our heads at ourselves and the unique quirks — and troubles — that we experience as overachievers.

First quirk — procrastination.

I meant to write this blog in March after making the first part of my office move, but then the apocalypse descended, and I’ve been a little busy. It’s a good time to be a therapist.

So, how does an overachiever move their office? In stages with multiple dates that get changed in the middle of a pandemic, of course. Because doing it all at once when the world is calm is too easy.

Here’s what happened…

The lease on my former office space ended on February 29. Yes, I got a whole extra day with the leap year. Even so, I moved out on February 27 and got the remaining stuff I’d forgotten in a storage closet on the 28th. I should mention that my birthday was February 26, which also happened to be Ash Wednesday this year. I should’ve guessed the year would go downhill after that. When Jesus doesn’t want you to have birthday cake, you know it’s going to get rough.

I should mention that packing, especially toward the end, involved several mantras, one of which was, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just packed.” Yep, those overachiever tendencies creep into everything. I’m very grateful for my office manager, who helped me, and my contractor. They even went scouting for boxes at the liquor store across the street. At least that’s what they told me they did over there. If they got anything else, they didn’t share.

My new office suite wasn’t ready in spite of the property manager and leasing agent telling me they were putting all their resources toward it, so we ended up in a temporary suite a floor down. I’m just happy they let us be somewhere in the building because I REALLY needed to get out of that previous situation.

So, to orient you to our timeline, we moved into Suite 310 on February 27. This particular space had formerly been leased by a government agency. It was gigantic — we didn’t even fill up 1/4 of it. If we’d wanted to, the three of us could have each picked a corner and never seen each other. When I did mindful walking with my patients, it turned into mindful hiking. I’m pretty sure we logged thousands of steps just going to the bathroom.

The powers that be first told me the new suite would be ready on March 13, and then that got pushed back to March 20, which still wasn’t the case, as the electricians still needed to do important things. Then, as you may remember, the shelter-in-place orders came down. I ended up moving essential office things into my spare bedroom, and that was it for the move a while.

I don’t know about y’all, but I hate having loose ends. The fact that my stuff was still in the temporary space — aka the world’s most expensive storage space* — lived at the back of my mind alongside worries about getting a deathly illness and the fact that I had to ration toilet paper.

Okay, overachiever brag — I have learned that I can make a roll of toilet paper last for a week or more. It’s now a challenge.

We finally got to move into our new suite on May 22. My office move lasted about three months and was fraught with complications, but we did it. I would say I work from there now, but the truth is, the cat got used to me being at home, and he’s very clingy, so I only go in two days a week. One does not reject a clingy cat.

So, what has been your major accomplishment during the pandemic? Even if it’s brushing your teeth regularly, it counts.

*Even though I was in a much bigger space, I was paying for the one I was moving into, so while it made for an expensive storage situation, it wasn’t that bad.