No. 5 Surge Time: Staying Steady When Life Speeds Up
This past week was very busy for me, which informed the newsletter theme of navigating “surge time”. My mentor defines this as a busy season when we face more demands than usual, either personal or professional. Sometimes you see them coming, and other times you don’t. I like to surf, so the analogy of a wave is apt here. How do you ride the wave of surge time, rather than be taken over?
INNER SUSTAINABILITY INSIGHT
How do you navigate moments when life gets unexpectedly busy?
From a nervous system perspective, busy seasons can activate our stress response, sending us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. That’s why it’s important to create small pockets of calm throughout the day, so you have the energy to sustain yourself through it.
When life speeds up, I like going back to basics. Three things that help me take care of my wellbeing during busier-than-usual seasons:
💧Hydration: Our bodies are mostly water, and I’ve noticed that staying hydrated helps me feel more alert and regulated, especially since I’m sensitive to caffeine.
🥗 Nourishing meals and snacks: Stress does funny things to digestion. Often, we either lose our appetite or crave sugary, greasy foods for a quick boost of energy. Keeping simple meals and healthy snacks on hand, like fruits and nuts, helps me stay focused. You definitely don’t want to see me hangry.
🧘🏻♀️Gentle movement: Stretching my hips, legs, and shoulders for 5–10 minutes helps when I’ve been sitting all day. Doing this before bed is also a helpful way to transition into sleep.
OUTER SUSTAINABILITY INSIGHT
Setting up productivity systems that work for you is key to navigating a busy workload. These systems are repeatable frameworks that help you organize your time, energy, and attention so you can focus on what matters most without burning out. There are many approaches out there, so it’s worth experimenting to find what actually fits your way of working.
As a green building professional, you’re often juggling multiple projects at different phases, each with its own set of requirements. That constant context-switching takes a lot of mental energy.
Here are three simple productivity systems you can use to stay on top of tasks during a busy season:
📕 Project workbook: Keeping a centralized space for meeting notes, action items, and deadlines to reduce the mental load of switching between projects.
✅ Weekly task mapping: Capturing all the tasks you need to complete in a given week.
🕚 Time blocking: Translating tasks into your calendar by assigning timeframes for when each one will get done.
I’ll be sharing more of these tools in the coming weeks, and I hope they support you; stay tuned!
One last thing: today’s hustle culture often ties self-worth to productivity, which can lead to burnout. Be compassionate with yourself if everything doesn’t get done.
I like to come back to this phrase from Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection: no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.
ART I’M MAKING
During busy weeks, I like to turn to my gratitude art journal. I found traditional gratitude journalling a little bland after a while, so I added collaging and sketching to spice things up. I list 5 things that I’m grateful from the day, both personally & professionally.
The practice helps me notice progress and what’s going well.
