cthewind's Blog

Headed into an overdue “break” next week, I’m a little worried about myself and the people I work with.

• Work has had a long time to pile up, and we’ve been tired, so we haven’t done it all. We may think it’s better for us to work through our break. It isn’t.

• The break has come so late, it probably will not be enough to restore us. Post-break we will still be tired and at reduced capacity.

Here’s my best, nearly monosyllabic advice, for myself and my beloved others: “Break self can’t decide. Break self can obey.”

And with this, rather unsparkling advice, I’d like to introduce the practice of compassionate tricks, which are little deceptions of self toward self, in which you make decisions and/or set rules in the present to benefit your future self.

I heard a great one from a colleague the other day. She loves reading. She also wants to run. These activities seem mutually exclusive, and one of them is far more intrinsically rewarding to her. In order to make running more attractive, she set the rule that she can listen to audiobooks only during her run. This is a win-win situation! She gets the exercise she wants so her body feels good AND she gets to listen to an audiobook, which affirms her in her identity and grounds her in her day.

A student I know who has been overwhelmed by work and admits to indulging in video games to numb stress started using alarms to signify boundaries between work and play time. They still get to play—sometimes even before working!—yet the playtime is limited by alarm.

This week, while I’ve been running on fumes, I shortened two class periods for specific activities that must be completed before the break. One of those is mapping out which days I will work on the break (maximum 2) and which days I will rest (the other 7). I also plan to map out the work for my future self when we return to campus.

I’m not going to lie, I’ll probably have to set an alarm to make myself do this and be fine with “good enough” plans, yet I know my future self will thank me for these compassionate tricks.