What I did with that Sunday night feeling

Sometimes I look at my weekly calendar on Sunday night, and I feel tired before even starting. I love my job, but I don’t always like the extroversion that it requires of me. I recently did an experiment to get to the bottom of this feeling.

To start with, I am not an extrovert. I am also not an introvert. My best balance in somewhere in the middle. When my job was essentially writing, I craved social interaction. When my job is so much talking to people, I crave solitude.

=This is not just a grass-is-greener thing, but more like a balance thing. My ideal work days are a 70/30 split between people and not-people. In my current job, this is hard to pull off, because it would be easy for it to be 100% people.

There may be leaders who thrive in 100% people situations, or close to it. I am not one of them. I can't solve problems without time to write and think. I am not a solve-it-by-talking thinker.

My best strategy has been working at home in the morning for a couple of hours before heading to the office whenever I can. I can’t always do this, but I try.

I noticed last year that my frequency of Sunday night fatigue was increasing. One Sunday it was particularly acute. I was staring down a week that was not only 40 hours of meetings, but they were mostly not meetings I was looking forward to. Instant fatigue.

So I did an experiment. I listed out every activity I had to do that week, mostly meetings but also a few other things I wanted to do (writing, data analysis, etc). Next to each thing, I wrote Good, Neutral, or Bad. The only criterion for me writing Good/Neutral/Bad was how I felt about it. Not priority, not value to the business, nor any other worthy thing. Just my own personal energy in anticipating the meeting or activity. I was totally honest. This list was just for me.

As I got to the end of each workday, I went through the list for the day and wrote Good/Neutral/Bad again, based on how the meeting or activity had actually made me feel. I was totally honest here too. I did this every day that week. At the end of the week, I compared the two lists.

How wrong I had been at the start of the week! 

In guessing my feelings ahead of time, I had guessed 10% Good, 50% Neutral and 40% Bad. (I told you, it had promised to be a really tough week.)

In assessing my feelings after the fact, I ended up. 60% Good and 40% Neutral. A much better outlook! And not bad at all, for a “tough week.”

I did this experiment a few months ago and have been chewing on it ever since. I substantially like the activities that my job requires. The feeling of Sunday night exhaustion comes and goes with the way I pace myself and piece the activities together.

If you get tired thinking about your work, the issue might not be the work itself. It may very well be the schedule you set up around the work. Or it may not. For me, this was a good way to tell the difference.

I structure my days a little differently since that experiment. I work from home in the mornings more often. I make sure I have at least an hour or two of unscheduled time at the office during core working hours most days. 

I specifically schedule Monday morning as open work time when I can, so I can get my thoughts in order for the week and gear up to make the most of all the meeting time. It has made a huge difference for my Sunday nights!