Hiya! Let’s jump right in - How do you stay organised?
T - I'm not a very organised person, I rely on my iPhone calendar to tell me where I'm supposed to be every day and if I forget to put something in there then the whole day crumbles. I try and write things down the moment I think of them, otherwise my brain ends up like my computer which has at any given time upwards of twenty tabs open.
S – I am inherently a very disorganised person - It’s why I wanted to have this discussion, to get some help!
T - I'm a big fan of that 2 minute rule we've discussed on the podcast. If it can get done in 2 minutes just do it right now without even thinking, and if it can't then just do 2 minutes worth of work on it.
S – Yes that rule helps me so much! I now never have any washing-up left over because it only takes a few minutes so I always do it straight away. I also use that rule to force me to organise my desktop space, that really helps me stay on top of things.
Do you find it hard to turn off your work brain and relax?
T - Very much so, but I'm also lucky in that I do something I love for a living, and I'm freelance, so I suppose you're always thinking about something. And generally it's always stuff I don't mind thinking about. I find it pretty hard to watch TV or a film without having to remind myself about something, or writing something down before I forget. Gosh. It's not til I'm saying this that I realise how much I don't switch off.
S – I find it especially hard to turn off my work brain because being a creative means I’m always coming up with ideas, and most of them come to me when I’m trying to make myself relax a little. Even when I do manage to relax I feel guilty for turning off and start to think about all the things I could be doing in that time. It’s vicious. I’ve found that I need to view stupid things like having a bath as actually being just as important for me as doing work – to be able to somewhat happily relax I need to be able to realise it’s worth and can then eradicate that sense of guilt because I still know that what I’m doing is worthwhile.
Do you feel guilty when you relax, Tessa?
Only in the sense that I'm a very lazy person. There's this experiment where they took clocks and natural light away from people to see how long they would sleep for if they didn't have to wake up for something, and honestly I think they'd have to stop the experiment for me because I would just stay asleep.
Do you think your phone gets in the way of your relaxation?
T - Oh I should think so. A small glass box with all the world's knowledge in it - we feel like there's always something we should be doing and we feel this intense guilt about it.
S – 100%!! I’ve started tricking myself into not being able to access things all the time like turning off WiFi on the tube. That small amount of time underground every morning and evening without WiFi means I literally can’t do anything other than just sit. Sometimes I wish the 24/7 availability of internet connection was never invented.
Do you have anything that some may regard as a ‘guilty pleasure’? I personally hate that term and think that if something gives me pleasure, I shouldn’t feel guilty about it! But sometimes these smaller things that give you pleasure are the best things to do when trying to relax, what do you think?
T - I lucked out in the queue for the gene pool in that I really don't get embarrassed easily. I honestly don't care what people think of any of the stuff I'm into, but I'm very aware of how easily people can be made to feel that their interests are stupid. I sat down to watch Love Island this year for the first time so I could see how stupid it was and then I watched the ENTIRE series and now follow Megan Barton-Hanson religiously on Instagram.
S - I think that quite often, hobbies or work that's historically thought of as feminine is often looked down upon. Like the difference between novels and chick lit. There's no man lit. It's just lit. So when I read Gone Girl or whatever on holiday, I feel like I have to caveat it all the time by loudly proclaiming how I know it's trashy. When it's absolutely not trashy, it's a page-turner and has exactly the same merit as a more man-oriented book like, I dunno, those ones where a grizzled detective is plunged into a world he doesn't understand. I've started cooking and am totally embarrassed about the fact that the other night I baked banana bread while my boyfriend played Red Dead Redemption. Think about that. That's madness. He was playing a COMPUTER GAME and was trying to TAME A WILD HORSE so he could GO AND HELP AN OLD MAN IN THE WOODS. None of it is real. I made a delicious cake and destressed myself - way more practical. But I immediately felt so lame!
Do you practice self-care? If so, how? Do you think the notion of self-care has peaked so much recently because we are increasingly busy and need an excuse to do something lazy?
S - The self-care movement is such a reaction to how we are now unable to relax unless we have a name for it. like you need permission to look after yourself because there is an underlying feeling of guilt every time you do something that isn’t work related. It’s a great movement but really has only been born out of our need to constantly feel like we are being successful, which is sad.
T- Self-care is such tricky one because it sounds like it's all about taking a bath for half the day and saying no to your friend's baby shower, but really it's about learning to like yourself, and that's much, much harder than we want to admit. It's that thing they say on airplanes - you've got to fix your own oxygen mask before helping others. Self-care is all about learning to be kind to yourself, because guaranteed there's some area of your life where you're really horrible. And that can be tough to realise about yourself.
With thanks to Stevie and Tessa, co-hosts of the Nobody Panic podcast.
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