Overriding Your Intuition
You know when you’ve overridden your intuition one too many times in a week or a month, or maybe even for years.
Your body tells you.
Your gut starts to bother you, or your neck or back seem “out of whack.” It might be subtle at first, a creaky knee and then a frozen shoulder. But over time it adds up.
Maybe you have said yes to too many projects lately. You want to get ahead at work, but everyone seems to come to you for everything. Now you can’t seem to even take a break for lunch to get away from your desk.
The first thing to do when you feel like you’ve lost track of your inner compass is to walk away from your desk for 5–10 minutes and get a fresh perspective. Shake out your shoulders and allow your body to re-energize its natural flow.
Now that many of us are working at home so much, we don’t have our usual reminders to get up from our desk and walk to the next meeting. This is especially true if all of our Zoom meetings take place in the same spot — your office or your dining room. I typically drink a lot of tea during my day, so I get up to use the bathroom at least once per hour.
I start to feel an edgy crankiness if I’ve been at the computer for more than 2 hours in a row. When this happens, I know it’s best to stand up, do some somatic movements (shoulders and hips, typically) and possibly to walk around for 5–10 minutes, if possible.
I might go check the mail outside. I might lay down on the floor with my feet up against a wall (a common restorative yoga pose) and listen to a podcast for 15–20 minutes. When the blood has had a chance to recirculate in my body, I take a look at my calendar, adjust priorities if needed, and then work for another 2 hour work session.
My first three of these sessions are the most productive of the day. Then I am drawn to taking a longer break, typically 90 minutes, for lunch and/or exercise or 15–20 minutes of napping (especially in winter or if I haven’t slept at least 7.5 hours).
If I’ve nourished myself well during my break I might come back for another session. But typically by then, my best brainpower is long gone. It’s best to make my list of what to do for tomorrow rather than worry about being productive.
Research shows that knowledge workers can get only about 4–5 hours of true productive thinking done in one day. And this is if they are caring for themselves well and taking breaks, attending to their body’s needs. Our mechanism for doing this is called “interoception” and it is something that’s altogether easy to ignore if we are under a deadline.
Interoception is a practice I teach to clients because many of us have over-active brains from so many years of being told to push through and ignore our bodies. This has caused us to live out-of-sync with our needs and has devastating consequences in the long run.
How often do you ignore your body’s signals and push through? Are you ready to take steps to unlearn this habit? What support would help you do this?
Be well, friends.
This story first appeared as a LinkedIn newsletter on February 18, 2022.