Today’s coping tip is to let go of self-criticism and speak to yourself kindly.
This tip follows on nicely from yesterday’s tip, just the other side of that one. I wanted to criticize myself recently for not having a bit more content prepped before my vacation. I was gone for 8 days, and while I had content scheduled for the time away, and for a day after I returned, I didn’t have any beyond that, which puts me in a bit of a crunch.
My career at SQL Server Central is running the site like a newspaper, which means things scheduled out a week or two in advance. Trying to pull content together a day or two before it’s needed is hard. It is also very stressful. I returned from vacation with 2 days of things, but not 4 or more, which meant that I needed to do some editing for articles and some writing for editorials.
Some weeks editorials flow and I can write 3, 4 or more. Others I struggle to produce one. I returned from vacation with 3 days to write an editorial or two (hopefully more) and relieve the stress.
I started to chastise myself for not having 1 or 2 more prepared for the next week and then stopped. That wasn’t helpful, and instead I decided to tell myself that I’ll come up with something interesting to say and just set aside some time to start writing.
I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.