Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Lighter Than You Started is a daily podcast offering gentle reflections on the news, the noise, and the small human moments that shape our days. With wry humour and quiet honesty, it’s not about fixing you, just about ending each day feeling a little lighter than when it began.
Hi I'm Keith and welcome to Lighter Than You Started. It's Monday and today I'd like to talk about catching up because Monday has an interesting habit of arriving with luggage. Things left over from Friday. Things we meant to do at the weekend. Messages we haven't answered.
Keith:Jobs we haven't finished. Perhaps a few things we confidently told ourselves are sort that out on Monday and then Monday arrives apparently unaware of all the additional responsibilities we've assigned to it. Poor Monday! It already has a dry reputation and now we've given it three days worth of unfinished business as well. Perhaps you've started the day with the feeling that you're already behind.
Keith:You haven't even properly begun and somehow you're already catching up. That's quite an achievement when you think about that. But behind is an interesting word. Behind what? Sometimes there's a genuine answer.
Keith:A deadline has passed. Someone is waiting for something. Something needed doing and it hasn't been done. That's real. But sometimes the answer is much less clear.
Keith:We're behind where we thought we'd be. Behind where we hoped we'd be. Behind a version of ourselves who in our imagination had a remarkably productive weekend. You know that version. They got up early on Saturday, went for a walk, did all the shopping, cleared the emails, tidied the house, sorted the paperwork, made something healthy for dinner, read three chapters of a book and some of the third times for a bastard to relax.
Keith:That's a very impressive person. I never seem to meet them But they feature quite readily in my plans. Then real life happens. We're tired. Something takes longer than expected.
Keith:Plans change. We decide we'd rather do something else or simply we don't do everything we imagined we would. And Monday arrives with a gap between where we are and where imaginary us was supposed to be. That gap can feel like failure but perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it's simply the difference between a plan and life.
Keith:We talked recently about plans being best guesses about a future we haven't met. I think personal expectations can work in much the same way. We imagine what we'll have done by a certain point. Where we'll be? How organized we'll feel?
Keith:How much progress we have made? Then we reach that point and reality has produced a slightly different answer. The temptation is to speed up, catch up, do more, get back on track. But before we do that perhaps it's a useful question. What exactly am I trying to catch up with?
Keith:A genuine commitment? Fine perhaps that does need attention. Or an imaginary timetable nobody except me knows exists? That's different. We can carry an extraordinary number of private deadlines.
Keith:I thought I'd have sorted this by now. I should be further along. I expected to have made more progress. At my age I thought that last one could carry rather more weight because catching up isn't only about Monday morning. We can feel behind in life, behind professionally, financially, personally.
Keith:We look sideways someone else has reached something we haven't. Their business is growing. They've changed career. Bought the house. Written the book.
Keith:Run the marathon. Retired and then started again. Found whatever it is we think we're supposed to have found by now. And suddenly our own life appears late. But late according to whose timetable?
Keith:There isn't one universal schedule. It would certainly make things easier if it were. We should all receive it at birth. Good morning here's your itinerary to reassort it by thirty one. Confidence arrives at thirty seven.
Keith:You finally stop worrying about what people think on a wet Thursday in November when you're 46. Useful! But life doesn't seem to operate like that. People begin things at different times, stop things at different times, change direction, pause, return, take longer, move quickly and often the very thing that looks like being behind from one angle turns out to be exactly where something else begins. Perhaps the difficulty is that we often compare our actual life with somebody else's visible milestone.
Keith:We don't see the years before it, the uncertainty, the help they had, the things they gave up, the luck, the timing, the difficult bits. We just see they're there and I'm here and then we invent a race between the two. Maybe there isn't one. There's a phrase we often use when we've been away from work. I've got loads to catch up on.
Keith:Sometimes that's true. Emails accumulated, tasks waited, things moved while we were gone, but even then you can't actually catch up with everything simultaneously. You still have to do one thing then another. Perhaps that's worth remembering when life feels behind too. You can't leap directly from where you are to where you think you should be.
Keith:You can only start from here and here isn't a mistake. It's simply the place you're standing. I think Mondays to become unnecessarily heavy when we spend the first part of them arguing with where we are. I should have done that. I shouldn't still have to sort this out.
Keith:I ought to be further ahead. Maybe all of those statements are understandable but none of them changes the starting point. You're here. It's Monday. This is what's done.
Keith:This is what isn't. This is how much energy you have. This is the information available. Perhaps we can begin there. Not from the imaginary Monday we planned last Thursday.
Keith:From this one. There's something quite practical about that. If five things remain unfinished you don't need to emotionally carry all five while you're doing the first one. Choose which matters now. If something genuinely needs catching up give it some attention, but perhaps don't add the additional burden of believing you should have already finished it.
Keith:The job is the job. The guilt is extra and guilt isn't always a particularly efficient project manager. It tends to stand behind us shouting you should be further ahead! Without offering much useful guidance about what to do next. Maybe a better question is given where I actually am what would help now?
Keith:That's very different from how do I get back to where I should have been? One begins with reality the other begins with an argument and perhaps this applies to bigger things too. If you're not where you expected to be in your career where are you? If something has taken longer than planned what does it need now? If you've stopped doing something that mattered to you do you want to begin again?
Keith:Not from where you were from where you are. Because we sometimes make restarting harder by believing we have to reach up a lost ground first. Imagine you used to walk five miles every day then life changed and you haven't done that for six months. You decide you'll start again. You don't owe the pavement six months of missed walks.
Keith:There's no backlog. You can just go for a walk today. That's it. Perhaps a shorter one. Perhaps a slower one.
Keith:The previous six months don't need to be repaid. I think that's important. Not everything we didn't do becomes a debt. Sometimes it simply becomes something we didn't do and today remains available. So if this month has arrived and you already feel behind perhaps stop for a moment.
Keith:Ask what you're actually behind on. Separate the real commitments from the private expectations. Deal with what genuinely needs dealing with and perhaps release some of the rest. You don't need to catch up with an imaginary version of yourself who had more time more energy better circumstances and apparently never got distracted by anything. That person doesn't need catching because they don't exist.
Keith:You do. Here. Right now. Today. And perhaps that's where this week gets to begin.
Keith:Not where you should have been. Not where somebody else is. Not where you thought you'd be by now. Here. There's nothing wrong with wanting progress.
Keith:Nothing wrong with goals. Nothing wrong with deciding you'd like something to change. But progress doesn't require us to insult the starting point. We can acknowledge where we are and move from there. One thing, one decision, one Monday at a time.
Keith:Today's thought for you. You don't need to catch up with yourself start from where you actually are. Thank you for sharing this moment and as always I hope you end today freely lighter than you started. Go gently and I'll see you tomorrow on the flip side. You can now listen to the Lighter Than Started podcast on Alexa.
Keith:Simply say, Alexa, play the Lighter Than You Started podcast. Lighter Than You Started is a think of something publishing production.