Why Do My Old Habits Come Back When I’m Tired?

I’m late writing this week’s conversation.

And when I realised I was late, my immediate thought was that I didn’t really have an excuse.

It’s been my daughter’s birthday and my parents are over, but it’s not like either of those things came as a surprise. I knew they were coming. I knew this week would be busy. I knew the blog needed writing. I could have got ahead.

Instead, I chose my other highly effective organisational strategy: bury my head in the sand and hope for a miracle.

Which, unfortunately, is something I have quite a lot of experience in.

Anything involving house admin is a particular favourite. Making appointments, sorting paperwork, booking things. And God forbid I actually have to call someone.

I can make one phone call into a three-day event. I’ll remember it in the morning and think, I’ll do that in a minute. Then it’ll be lunchtime and I’ll remember again, but decide it’s probably not a good time because they might be on lunch. Suddenly it’s 4.30 and obviously there’s no point calling now, so I may as well leave it until tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’ve thought about the bloody phone call approximately seventeen times.

Holiday packing is another one. I’ve always packed the night before we go away, and for years I’ve had what I considered to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this: if I pack too early, I’ll forget what I’ve already packed.

Therefore, apparently, it makes far more sense to leave absolutely everything until the night before a flight and attempt to remember what four people need for a week while under time pressure.

Written down, I can see there may be a couple of holes in the logic.

Christmas and Easter used to be the same. I’d know they were coming — obviously — but somehow there was always this belief that there was plenty of time.

Until there wasn’t.

The strange thing is, though, I’ve actually got much better at all of this.

Over the last year especially, I’ve started recognising what I’m like. I know putting something off doesn’t make it disappear. Quite the opposite. The thing I haven’t done sits in the back of my head taking up space until I finally deal with it.

So now I try to make the call, book the appointment, sort the thing. I’ve even got better at Christmas and Easter rather than behaving as though they’ve suddenly appeared on the calendar with absolutely no warning.

And I know I feel better for it.

Which is why I was getting slightly annoyed with myself this week. I could feel that old version of me creeping back in. I knew I needed to write this. I thought about writing it. I knew I was running out of time to write it, and still I kept thinking, I’ll do it later.

At first, I thought this week’s conversation might be about procrastination. Why we ignore things we know are coming. Why we hand everything over to Future Us as though she’s going to wake up tomorrow with considerably more time and enthusiasm than we have today.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that wasn’t really what was going on.

I’m just fucking tired.

We’re thirteen weeks into the school summer holidays.

Thirteen weeks.

I love my children dearly, but Christ.

My normal routine disappeared sometime around June and I’m not entirely sure where it went. I’ve been working around the children, trying to keep HerRhythm moving, doing the house, sorting meals, keeping everyone vaguely entertained, attempting to exercise, dealing with the heat and listening to “Mummyyyy” approximately four thousand times a day.

And for most of the summer, I think I’ve actually managed it pretty well.

But I think summer has finally caught up with me.

I can feel it in the little things. That general feeling of I’ll deal with it later has started creeping back in. Jobs I’d usually just get done are hanging around longer. Exercise is easier to skip. Decisions I’d normally make without thinking suddenly feel like they require far more effort than they actually do.

And my first reaction to that is still to get annoyed with myself.

Oh for God’s sake. Why am I doing this again?

Because I think when we get better at something, we expect the old version of us to disappear.

I certainly do.

If I’ve become more organised, I expect myself to stay organised. If I’ve got into a good exercise routine, I expect myself to keep exercising. If I’ve stopped procrastinating over every bit of life admin, I assume I’m now a person who just gets things done.

Then I get tired and suddenly there I am again, avoiding a phone call for three days and hoping someone else might magically write my blog.

In the past, this is the sort of thing I would have taken as evidence that I’d gone backwards. I’d had a good run, fallen out of it and now needed to “get back on it”. Usually on a Monday, obviously. Or the first of the month. Or when the children went back to school. Basically whenever Perfect Leanne™ was due to make her triumphant return.

But I don’t think I see it quite like that anymore.

Because maybe the old habits showing up again don’t automatically mean everything I’ve learnt has disappeared. Maybe sometimes they’re just a pretty good indication of what I’ve got left to work with.

And this week, apparently, it isn’t much.

That doesn’t mean I get to blame every unfinished job on being tired. Sometimes I genuinely am avoiding something because I can’t be arsed and I need to make the bloody phone call.

But there’s a difference between knowing that and immediately deciding I’m back to my old ways.

Because if I look at what’s actually going on rather than just at what I haven’t done, the answer is fairly obvious. I haven’t suddenly forgotten how to organise myself. I haven’t undone the last year. I’m just finding the things that normally come quite easily a bit harder at the moment.

And I think that’s what I’m getting better at noticing.

A few years ago, I would have noticed the behaviour first. I’m procrastinating again. I’m skipping workouts again. I’m not getting enough done. I need to sort myself out.

Now I’m more likely to wonder what’s going on underneath it.

Not in a let’s analyse every decision I make sort of way. God knows I don’t need another full-time job. But enough to recognise that sometimes my behaviour changes before I’ve actually admitted to myself that my energy has.

That’s probably what happened this week.

I started this conversation saying I was behind and didn’t really have an excuse. And technically, I was right. None of this week was unexpected. I could have planned for it differently. I could have got ahead.

But perhaps understanding why I didn’t is more useful than spending Friday annoyed with myself because I didn’t.

It doesn’t change the fact that the blog needed writing. It just changes the story I tell myself about why it wasn’t.

So no, I haven’t discovered the cure for procrastination while writing this. I’ll probably still pack for my next holiday the night before and insist there’s a perfectly sensible reason for it.

But I think the next time I notice myself burying my head in the sand and waiting for a miracle, I might ask myself what else is going on before deciding I’ve reverted to the old me.

Although this week I don’t really need to ask.

It’s week thirteen of the school holidays. I’m fucking tired.

And, eventually, the blog got written.

Leanne

Replace guilt with understanding.

HerRhythm.