The Energy Audit: How to Fit a Passion Project onto an Already Full Plate

Yesterday I wrote a little about how I had been feeling. I didn't feel like it was burnout, as when I would spend a day resting (Sunday), I would still feel tired and uninspired the next week. I didn't feel that it was boredom with a lack of activity, as I was still so busy every week (hence the day of rest every Sunday). There is something in-between. Your plate may be full, but your exhaustion stems not from overwork necessarily, but from under-stimulation. It could be that your tasks are repetitive and unchallenging, or your gifts and talents are underused. This is where I've been. And here's how I've addressed it.

The Myth of the "Blank Slate"

If I had waited for a blank slate to start my newsletter, I would still be waiting. My days are packed. So instead of waiting for empty space, I carved it out of my existing routine. I chose to cook simpler meals for a few weeks to lower my chore load, and I traded my lunchtime with a podcast for thirty minutes of quiet writing. I didn't get a blank slate; I just chose to paint over a small corner of the canvas I already had. A creative project was not a drain on my limited time, but a generator of mental energy.

Job-Crafting for Busy Lives

Are you familiar with the term "job-crafting?" Psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton pioneered this concept around 2001. In short, it's an organizational psychology framework where individuals intentionally redesign their own roles to better fit their values, strengths, and passions. For a homemaker or a woman in a transitional phase, it means looking at her daily life not as a fixed checklist of chores, but as a flexible role that she has the power to remodel. The end result is greater motivation, reduced burnout, and improved performance in one's role.

There are 3 main pillars of job-crafting: task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting. Let's talk about each of those and see how they might look for women like us.

Task Crafting

image: Josue Michel on Unsplash

Task crafting for a busy life may look more like an efficiency shift. For me, that has meant streamlining or bundling repetitive chores to aggressively buy back 30 to 60 minutes of daily creative time. I mentioned that I've been serving simpler dinners and cooking enough for more than one meal at a time. I also have consolidated my grocery shopping into 2 sessions per month, instead of once per week. When I clean house, I go about it like a mad-woman. I no longer spend my lunch break mindlessly listening to podcasts while I simultaneously eat lunch and play solitaire. I write instead. And I've turned a couple of seasonal tasks over to my daughters. I have averaged about 10 hours of time savings per week for the past month. That right there has given me the time I needed to put together this newsletter.

Relational Crafting

image: Hillary Ungson on Unsplash

If task crafting was more of an efficiency shift, relational crafting for a busy life could be termed a connection shift. As a homemaker, and particularly with my family needing me less and busy with their own lives, my role has been isolating. The shutdowns with Covid didn't help either. I kept up with group Bible studies via zoom in that year, but it wasn't the same. If you're the keeper of the home, then your job description entails a lot of hours alone actually keeping that home. Relational crafting puts us into projects that connect us to an intentional community, and not merely a social hour where you hang out for a bit. Sharing a passion for a project or organization fosters deeper connections. 

This might look like hosting a cooking group for the woman who lives alone. One night a month, the hostess invites a handful of other solo women to cook with and share a feast with. This is different from a potluck gathering. In relational crafting, the women participate in the cooking together.

Or it might look like an opportunity to share your skills with others just starting out. By midlife and older, we've accumulated an incredible wealth of practical knowledge. There are women who would welcome an "expert" in a craft they are just starting out in. Many churches have knitting circles. At our last church, there was a woman who could knit socks like a pro. Anyone who wanted to come to the month's knitting group could learn from her. Or perhaps it's a bread-baking for beginners group, where you share your bread-baking knowledge with a group of women once a month. We so often turn to youtube for tutorials to learn new skills. By sharing skills in person instead, those deep and meaningful connections are formed, and the "expert" finds herself needed in a new way. Homemaking skills are valuable assets worth teaching and passing down.

Or perhaps relational crafting might look like one neighbor starting a private facebook group for the entire neighborhood, or a woman orchestrating a group email exchange with a friend group from church, or initiating an extended-family, round robin newsletter. Instead of writing alone, she is the "editor," encouraging the other women in the group to participate and feel seen and heard -- asking a question, soliciting favorite moments of the week from the group, or a book recommendation. This sort of group connects a specific circle of women in a safe and non-public space.

Cognitive Crafting

image: LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

The last pillar of job-crafting is cognitive crafting, an identity shift, where you reshape your view of your current role, and you expand it to include your whole person, not just a list of jobs that you do. I am not just the person who does the housework, but I am the woman who manages the home and I create publications. A month ago I began putting more of myself into my blog writing. When I started the newsletter, I chose to see myself as someone who writes, not just the blog, but now in another format. I began to see myself as creative in a way I hadn't defined myself for many years. But also, I began to see my role in the house in different ways. Yes, I manage the finances and cook meals, but I am also the caretaker of my family's health and well-being. I am the one who does the research on nutrition to make sure we all eat as well as possible. I am the event planner who creates events for us to enjoy and bond over. These are important roles in a family. My husband takes care of us financially, and I take care of our health and emotional well-being. Because I think of myself in this way, I put more effort into performing my role.

The Hospital Custodian Lesson

The hospital worker study conducted by Wrzesniewski and Dutton looked at employee job satisfaction at a major medical center. They were most interested in the group of employees tasked with cleaning patient rooms. The study found that there were two main groups of employees, divided by their attitude and concept of their roles in the hospital.

In one group, employees tended to describe their jobs as if they were reading off of the "want ad" for that role, listing basic tasks that they performed daily. This group identified their work as unskilled labor. They didn't particularly enjoy their work, instead citing they were there for the "benefits." 

The second group held a surprising view of their jobs. They looked at their work as important in the hospital and highly skilled. They saw themselves as providing a clean environment for patients to recover in. They engaged patients in conversation daily, developing bonds with folks at some of their most vulnerable moments in life. They were the type of custodian who whistled their way through each shift. These were deeply happy employees. They saw themselves as integral parts of the hospital environment. They weren't doctors or nurses, yet they felt similar responsibility toward the well-being of the patients. They took a basic janitorial job and reimagined it into a form of healing facilitator. They made an identity shift in how they viewed their role.

Guess which group suffered the least amount of burnout?

My personal "busy but uninspired" mindset likely came on in bits and pieces. There wasn't one huge catastrophic event or life change that led to my state. My life was full. My life was busy. But the light of joy was barely flickering. Over time, I'd come to undervalue the importance of my role as a homemaker, while simultaneously taking on any and every extra job asked of me, whether or not it fit who I was designed to be. We've each been given unique passions and talents. When women are very busy, it is easy to put focus on physically doing and neglect our inner beings.

Looking to tomorrow's post, what are your top three household chores that feel like mindless energy drains? Thursday, we'll look at how to sandwich those drains between 'Anchor Tasks' to physically restructure our days.