Hi Counteralk community,

You know that we’ve got you right? When you’re dealing with those big issues, you want someone who really gets it. Merly is an ex-chef, therapist, stress reduction coach and founder of @me_myself_inmind, which provides workshops, one-to-one therapy and group therapy for you incredible, hard-working, hard-caring people in the hospitality industry. Their mission is built around educating others on stress reduction techniques, mental health awareness and the importance of learning coping skills, emotional resilience and self awareness. Maybe you are working right now, or maybe you are at home learning to adjust. Those skills are still sorely needed to boost our wellbeing whatever we are up to.

Each week Merly is on hand to answer some of our community’s problems. If you would like to submit a problem, please email merly@countertalk.co.uk. All questions are completely confidential and kept 100% anonymous, now and always.

I feel so guilty every day for not doing more with my time during lockdown. I used to be so productive and I keep telling myself that tomorrow I will do something really productive but then it comes to the morning and then I actually have no interest in doing anything at all. I just find myself procrastinating all day and I don’t know what can I do about this?

The pandemic has really set us all up with some really difficult challenges, one being the responsibility for our free time during lockdown. I have noticed that this issue is especially common for hospitality professionals, as typically ‘time off’ is dictated via a rota which is decided for you (sure you could request time off, but usually you get what you are given) and then you fit your lives around that rota. Shift work usually sets a non-routine lifestyle for many so it’s hard to adjust to this new norm. In retrospect, the thought of having so much time off and opportunity to have a routine would have sounded like bliss. But in ‘this reality’ it’s overwhelming for many and creates feelings of guilt and over procrastination.

Procrastinating over we what you ‘should’ be doing is more emotionally complex than you think and everyone procrastinates in different areas of life. Some may be really productive at work and over procrastinate in certain areas of their personal lives, and vice versa for others. So, let’s look at it in a different way as it may unrealistic to think we can totally eradicate it but reducing our procrastination may be more doable.

Firstly, there is no official measurement of whether you have used your personal time well or not. Nobody is going to judge you, other than yourself. We all set our own expectations around this and a lot of the time our expectations are unrealistic. In the same way that there is always a reason why we act in certain ways, there are also reasons why we don’t act. So, I invite you to have some compassion for yourself, life is difficult right now and this really impacts our desire to be proactive. It may be just be an achievement to get out for a walk or get some food shopping, yet we focus on punishing ourselves for not completing an online course and not going on a 10k run…So we fail to go out for the walk and do the food shopping which then makes us feel worse and we fall in to a cycle of self-damnation. However, the answer doesn’t lie in the online course or the 10k run, but rooted deeper in our issues and fears.

There is a saying by Arthur Ashe that goes: ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ This really rings true in accordance to our motivation:

Start where you are: Self-acceptance of where you are is the start of stepping in right direction. Berating yourself simply not ‘doing’ or not figuring out what you want to do with your spare time doesn’t make the answers or motivation come any quicker.

Use what you have: Use tasks that you are already putting off to help you break some of the negative cycle. It may be as simple as calling loved ones, cleaning the house, food shopping or going for a walk. These things may be mundane but doing the smaller tasks can give you that sense of achievement that encourages you to contemplate the bigger things.

Do what you can: Reword your self- talk. Instead of telling yourself “I will go for a walk when I feel like it” may not actually get you out the house because you may never ‘feel like it’. Instead, try to recall how a walk makes you feel from experience. For example, “After I go for a walk, I know it will make me feel more energised and clear my head. I know I will also feel like I have achieved something”. This way you are recalling a beneficial outcome, not some sort of dread.

It somehow seems more natural and productive to sit and berate ourselves for feeling like we under-achieving, but instead we are only wasting more time and starving ourselves of any sort of accomplishment or enjoyment. Instead of telling yourself on some level: “I should be self-improving”, ask yourself “what could I do”. You may not feel like completing a course or doing yoga every day, but you could read a chapter of your book or watch a film or get creative in the kitchen, if that’s what you enjoy. It is unlikely that you will feel unproductive forever, especially if you have historically been quite the opposite. You haven’t chosen this situation for yourself and many others fear that they will get ‘stuck’ in this funk forever. In fact, you are more likely feel more grateful and eager to be firing on all productive cylinders when the time is right and opportunity arises.

If you are interested in understanding more about procrastination and motivation, then a good book to read is The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done by Dr Piers Peel. Whilst this book may not provide the ‘magic-wand’, his mix of using psychology, research and how our biology factors in to this is very insightful. The self-help tools in the book are also useful, but the best part of the book is understanding on a deeper level the ‘why’ we behave in certain ways. That’s when we can really begin to help and apply ourselves differently.