#024 – On active investments in ‘seasonal’ living

Does anyone feel like they live seasonally anymore? 

I am a big fan of seasons. Moving to Canberra from Brisbane over 18 years ago (!), I love being in Canberra’s 4 distinct seasons. I remember growing up in Brisbane, desperate to wear a coat during winter (and succeeding – by wearing a strappy singlet underneath).

Most of us don’t tend to eat with the seasons, supermarket convenience means we can eat oranges year round and pick up a bunch of asparagus imported from the other side of the world.

We live most of our lives in temperature controlled environments, and you could probably wear the same thing to work year round, just throwing a jacket on in winter.

It wasn’t until having children that the concept of the seasonality of life really struck me. Before kids, I was happy to work as much as was needed, go out all weekend with friends and burn the candle at both ends. It was ‘summer’ all year round, year in, year out. And it was great.

Now, life is different.

I don’t want an endless ‘summer’.

I definitely don’t want to work all the time, and I relish solitude more than I used to.

I like pottering away at different things, and sowing the seeds in the hope of growing lots of different possibilities. My kids are growing increasingly independent as my oldest approaches 8. We spent this weekend outside in the sunshine at home (me reading, the boys building cubbies, all interspersed with a timer going off every 30 minutes as a reminder to take Mr 2 to the toilet – hooray for a weekend at home for toilet training!).

My kind of seasonality isn’t just about what the weather is doing (though that is part of it), it’s more about how living in ‘season’ helps to balance what life throws at you in a way that helps to manage and boost your wellbeing.

 I hate the term work-life balance.

 It is near impossible to balance day-by-day or even week-by-week your work responsibilities with your non-work responsibilities.

 Add caring responsibilities to the mix and you start to be pulled in a million different directions at once.

As singer Lily Allen said last month “It really annoys me when people say you can have it all, because, quite frankly, you can’t”. When reflecting on how having kids impacted her career, she said it “ruined it”, but had no regret about focusing on her family.

It's a fair call. And the life of a pop star is probably wildly different from the lives of you or me, dear reader.

But what if we were to pop a seasonal lens over life, and not just the traditional view of the regular change in weather, but if we zoom out, maybe life is more like a climate season – for a couple of years (or more) we might be more El Nino, and then we might change.

When we view life in terms of long or short seasons, the need to balance everything, all the time slides a little bit.

So we all ate breakfast for dinner this week because we got home late from school/work. That’s cool. Next week (or next month) we might make dinner with multiple pots and pans (or not, also fine).  

This season you might make a conscious effort to not be at work late, and not log back on after dinner. Instead, you might get back into reading or join a choir, or finally sign up for that pottery class you have been meaning to take.

Taking a seasonal approach can lead to less guilt. Less guilt that you aren’t doing it all at work. And less guilt that you aren’t making dinner from scratch/taking kids to all the activities/seeing your friends/going on date night/going to the gym etc etc. Maybe it’s not the season for that.

So what might a seasonal approach to modern wellbeing look like?

Central to a seasonal approach is intention.

If you think a seasonal approach will just ‘happen’, you will end up feeling pulled in all the directions as you try to please everyone (and you definitely won’t end up pleasing yourself).

In Ali Abdaal’s book Feel Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You, he suggests setting up an ‘Energy Investment Portfolio’.

In the left hand column, list your ‘Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions’.

This list can be as long as you like. Go nuts.

In the right hand column, list ‘Active Investments’. Here you have to be a little more disciplined, because you need to invest your energy into the projects (and we all know there isn’t an unlimited supply we can tap!). The right hand column should be limited based on the amount of time and energy you have to invest. For some people, it might be around 5 things, if you have young kids, it might be 1-2 things, or if you have a really hectic career, it might be 3.

Here's what mine looks like

Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions

Learn Spanish

Live overseas again with my family

Organise a solo holiday

Start a meditation and wellbeing business

Write a book

Run 10k

Go on a meditation retreat

Live in an ashram

Design and build a permaculture garden

Start a holiday ‘commune’ with friends so we can have adult and kid summer camp

Be a lifelong learner

Raise 3 healthy and happy boys with my husband

Active Investments

Build a website

Do knee rehab so I can go back to the gym

Spend quality time with kids (not quantity time)

Spend time each week to keep on top of uni course work

Writing a list helps to narrow the choices. When you have free time – and seemingly infinite choices – it is a lot harder for your brain to commit to one activity. You might think that you will go for a run, but maybe watch some Netflix first because you are tired, but you end up spending 30 mins choosing a show, while at the same time as flicking through your phone, and suddenly your free time has evaporated.

 I remember when I was a new mother feeling paralysed by choice while my son was sleeping. What would I do with this free time - which could last 5 mins, or it could last 2 hours!! Should I sit down with a scalding hot cup of tea? Do laundry? Read a book? Eat a meal with 2 hands?? If I didn’t think about what I wanted to do in advance, more often than not I would end up scrolling through Instagram, eating some crackers and impulse purchasing something from Kip and Co.

 Having a small list of active investments means you are in theory, better able to resist overcommitting yourself. If you have a big project on at work with a deadline in 3 months, your in-laws are coming to visit, your brother is getting married, you are studying part-time, and you decide to coach your niece’s soccer team, you are going to start to feel pretty stressed out, pretty quickly. So maybe you decide to take the semester off, and shift study off the active investment list.

 You might even want to think about the year ahead and plan out how your active investments might shift throughout the next 1-3 years. If you are trying to get promoted, you might actively invest more time in your career, but then start spending more time at home to build the garden you had always dreamed of. If you have just had a baby, you might be actively investing your time in sleeping, learning how to interpret baby cries, and wondering if you will ever have a moment to yourself again (the answer is yes, hang in there!).

 If we were to apply literal seasonality to the way we live, what would it look like?

 How would you invest your time in summer, when the days are long, versus winter?

In autumn, as the weather cools and the leaves change, how would you spend your days and weeks? What about in spring? 

Day by day and week by week, we tend to think we can do it all. We can’t.

I am not sure why we think this is a bad thing, or that we have failed. We haven’t. I think the only failure is not getting super clear on how you want to ‘invest’ your time and letting others invest it for you. A lot of the time, we don’t even notice we are doing it.

Think back to the last time you logged back on to work after dinner. Did you do this for a specific reason, or was it out of habit or some sense of obligation?

Or the last time you picked up your phone to do something. Did you decide to ‘invest’ 20 mins scrolling through Instagram, or did you pick it up to check a text message and then wonder why you ended up on social media?

Or did you sit down to play with your kids and then end up responding to work emails instead of building an epic zoo out of duplo?

No judgement. I have done all of the above. But I really try not to do it anymore. It doesn’t always work, but I notice myself doing it now and can make the active decision to continue to invest my time in a distracted way. Or not.

I am in a bit of an autumn season of life right now. I say no to more things than I say yes to (for some hot tips on why creating a ‘to don’t list helps with this– read post #020).

I am sowing some metaphorical and actual seeds (hello winter veg patch) as I think about starting a meditation and wellbeing related business, and we are teaching the kids to do more and more things for themselves so they grow in independence (and we don’t have to put away their laundry). There is a certain freedom to letting go of the freneticism of summer and welcoming in the coolness and changing colours of my investments in autumn life.

Let me know in the comments which season in life you feel like you are in – and does it match the season of life that you want to be in? What will you invest in to make it happen?

Be well,

Alicia