How to get brutally efficient
Fewer ‘to dos’ and more ‘to don’ts’ please
In the hours before leaving for Finland, where I’m writing to you from this week, I had a monster to-do list to finish. Every single task needed to be ticked-off or I would have - and here comes that phrase we so often use to punish ourselves - let everyone down.
I wrote every Christmas card and hand delivered some, purchased ludicrously expensive stamps, bought gifts, wrapped presents for children and took them to the post office, put up the tree and decorated it - including carefully placing single strands of gold lametta, which ain’t nobody got time for - went to three Christmas markets, drank mulled wine, had a merry film night and a gluttonous dinner with friends.
Then wondered why I was wired off my face and unable to sleep.
The result was that I departed feeling not festive so much as slightly frazzled. It was what I think so many of us feel on Christmas Day itself - that the amount of admin we’ve had to do before we can actually sit down and taste the turkey, is a recipe for never quite managing to unwind and actually relax into it. Even more so if you have children.
Though perhaps the modern affliction I think sums this up best is those wire strings of lights that Oliver Bonas has managed to flog in bulk; the tyranny of turning their tiny battery boxes on and off being akin to a Victorian housemaid having to start lighting the fires in the Big House at 4am.
It’s not too late to stop the rot. ‘Emotional wintering’ is a concept written about by Katherine May in her 2020 book Wintering. It’s the human instinct to retreat from the world during the bleak, chilly seasons in our lives - either meteorological or emotional - and to which we rarely pay attention.
She writes:
‘Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Wintering is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.’
‘Acts of brutal efficiency’. Why does that appeal so much right now? At this time of year, more than any other, we are brutal towards ourselves for not coping better. We don’t adapt. We don’t metamorphose unless you count changing from a not-relaxed woman into an even less relaxed woman. I’ll cut myself some slack in January, we think, before powering through as though we’re going to win an award for effort, when really hardly anyone will notice or care.
Now I have stopped. I’m writing this on a train to the small Finnish town of Tampere; snow-blanketed fields and fir trees whizzing past the window. It’s like I’ve stepped into Narnia and Mr Tumnus is about to hoof it out of the forest towards me. It’s revoltingly magical.
It feels a bit transformative seeing this landscape and feeling small in the world. But I’ve only found it by literally escaping for a week - brutally efficient in some ways, but not always realistic. Surely there’s an easier way?
What I want is to be brutally efficient in my daily life and that means making time and space. Not for to-dos that serve others, but for to-don’ts that serve me. It’s a version of emotional wintering that means expanding into the spare moments you have, rather than letting them expand and overwhelm you.
Easier said than done. But it probably begins with listening to your gut, hibernating when needed, not going ‘over and above’ when ‘good enough’ will do. It’s not selfish, it’s self-preservation, right?
As a starter, here are my festive to don’ts and to dos for the coming weeks and the future…
To don’t
Not writing Christmas cards to people who know how much they mean to you and don’t need a goggle-eyes sprout or Comic Sans platitude to remind them.
Not hand making cards, ever.
Not saying yes to social occasions when you’d rather stay home.
Not feeling pressured to drink your ninth mulled wine of the day by 3pm.
Not giving in to perfectionist tendencies that mean you trawl the shops in person to find the ideal present, when buying online is often no less thoughtful and a lot less time-consuming.
Accepting that the perfect present doesn’t actually exist and that buying your friend something you know they’ll love is satisfying but not actually a signifier of the closeness or quality of your relationship.
To do
Lower your expectations of yourself - who says you have to be a superwoman just because it’s the ‘festive season’ and TV adverts are full of busy women making things look nice. Enough.
Listen to yourself. What do you want to do? What do you feel capable of doing? What are the consequences if you don’t do it? Where is the pressure coming from - yourself or external forces? And what are those external forces doing to help exactly?
Ask for help. Or don’t ask for help, because it’s not ‘help’ if it concerns your own home or family. Tell someone what you need.
Take a break - you don’t have to run away to Scandinavia, but you do have to build in some space for yourself. Don’t set it up as a reward to allow yourself in the new year for getting everything done. It’s not the pay off for running yourself ragged, but a non-negotiable part of being.
Don’t compare. A friend has mostly jettisoned social media for December and I can see the appeal when my feed seems to be filled with amazing parties I’m not at, aspirational trees covered in velvet ribbons (when did this become a thing?) and delicious rhinestone tights by H&M that cost 38 fucking quid. None of this is helpful.
No guilt please. At least half a dozen separate women have whispered guilty to me, this week, that they’ve bought as much for themselves which Christmas shopping as they have for their families and friends. There has to be a reason for this. I wonder whether we’re treating ourselves as a balm instead of thinking about what we actually need emotionally at this time of year.
May puts it like this:
‘Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting — is a radical act now, but it’s essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. It’s one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.’
That’s the sort of brutal efficiency we can apply in the winter months and during those times when a harsh, cold wind seems to blow through your life, leaving everything grey.
If we don’t? Like in Narnia, it might always be our emotional winter.