Finite Bitching
Timebox your negativity
It has now been six weeks since my bike crash1. Surgery is complete, all braces are off, and I have full range of motion of both of my arms. The last (longer) step is to add strength back to my arms. But I’m done with the hard part. I am sleeping in a bed again, and I am sleeping through the night. I can type at my pre-wreck speed. I can stand at my desk for hours. And I can do the dishes again, so I feel like a contributing member of the family again. And in another two weeks, I’ll be back on the bike again.
I have shown you the spreadsheets I’ve been using to track my recovery progress2. I have studiously kept this daily logging going, and will continue to do so until PT ends in another six weeks. But over these last six weeks, there was one day, December 13th, where all I wrote down was “My F*ck It Day”. I just curled up for the day. I gave myself a day of not caring all that much about my recovery. 24 hours later, I went right back to the logging.
My F*ck-It Day reminded me of the “Wallow Week” I put on my calendar immediately following my exit from Microsoft. Overall, I had a positive outlook on my termination, celebrating all that I had done over my three decades and valuing the huge Microsoft family that I had built over that time. I had spent the three months leading up to this layoff getting myself mentally prepared, and intentionally building this positive spin. But I knew that I would need a bit of “F*ck It” time as well. So I put in on the calendar. This accomplished two things: it reserved space for me to just be sad about the turn of events, and it timeboxed the sadness. When the Wallow Week was over, I put it behind me and got to work.
Even an over-the-toptimist3 has a bad day. You don’t always need to run away from the negativity. You just have to constrain it’s time. You can handle a little of the negative stimuli, just keep the volume low enough to not sabotage your Energy Flywheel4.
As it goes with pity, so it goes with complaining. At the bottom of my “oft-uttered phrases” whiteboard at work5 was the phrase, “Finite Bitching”. Written under that was, “Vent. Move on.” I consider myself a pretty empathetic person, but I am very aware of the timeout I have for that empathy. The negative is there. The negative is real. The negative should be acknowledged. But the negative should not consume. The negative should not win.
“Finite Bitching” was last phrase on my whiteboard intentionally. I would cover every possible oft-uttered phrase before this one. But, alas, there would come a time when I would point the person to that final phrase. I’ve heard your concerns. I’ve let you vent. Now it’s time to move on.
