Saying No to what I feel I should do

Navigating the space between should and want, and finding more permission for ease and rest.

In this last stretch of pregnancy, my limited energy has forced me to be ruthless in how I spend my time. With my due date fast approaching, I’ve had many opportunities to try and differentiate between the things I feel that I should do and the things I actually want to do.

Most recently, I was invited to a networking dinner, and reading through the names of other attendees, I noticed a feeling of should arise. I really should go. It would be good to meet or catch up with some of these engineering leaders. Everyone else is attending networking events, I should be as well.

But then I noticed my mind immediately making excuses —I don’t want to risk getting sick at an event with so many people. I don’t want to be stuck in the city if I need to go to the hospital so close to my due date. And maybe the most relatable for fellow introverts agreeing to things they don’t really want to do — if I rsvp yes, I could still back out last minute if I’m not feeling well (iykyk).

I’ve found that while some of these excuses are legit reasons not to go, they usually indicate that it’s not something I wanted to do in the first place.

When I notice a should, it’s usually tied to a mindset of scarcity and of limited opportunity. I should go because if I don’t, I might not have these types of opportunities again. I should go because I could meet someone there who leads to other opportunities. I should go because this is the type of event other people are eager to go to. I should go because if I don’t, I won’t keep getting invited to these events.

These last few months have really tested my fortitude in the face of shoulds, with plenty of interesting opportunities cropping up in my inbox. An invitation to facilitate a panel of engineering leaders. After my recent post about Career History Interviews, and invitation from a well-known publisher to create a course on effective interviewing. After my post on Ask vs Guess Culture, an invitation to give a talk and lead a discussion at a FAANG company.

All these opportunities in my inbox brought up conflicting emotions — excitement that these opportunities were coming my way, and dread that if I took them on, I’d be piling more on my plate at a time when I have very limited capacity.

I ended saying no or “not now” to all of these opportunities and felt immediate relief at finally responding to emails that had lingered in my inbox for weeks.

And I’ve said yes to a select few that have felt manageable and enjoyable — a fireside chat for an upcoming Haas class. A guest post on interviewing mindsets for Dev Interrupted (coming soon!).

As I’ve turned these opportunities down or pushed them down the road, I’ve had to challenge myself to have a more abundant mindset around opportunities like these. I try to imagine these opportunities like a firehose — it would completely overwhelm me to stand in direct line of its full blast. Rather, I can stand off to the side and pick and choose what suits me. Sometimes that firehose may be less robust, and sometimes my bandwidth to take on opportunities may be close to zero, but I choose to believe that in those limited seasons of life, that firehose won’t shut off completely and indefinitely.

While I contemplated whether or not to attend the networking dinner and started listing all my reasons not to go, my husband Naveed observed: it seems like you turn down a lot of things but you still keep getting invited to events, and if you really wanted to, with a little effort, you could get invited to more — it’s ok for you to just not want to go.

As I protect this time headed into newborn life, I find myself becoming bolder and clearer with myself what I want to spend my time on.

Even as I intend to have a more abundant mindset about my career, general uncertainty plus third trimester insomnia create the perfect breeding ground for anxious thoughts around scarcity. But it’s clear to me that I don’t want to spend my last few weeks of pregnancy with deadlines or events on my calendar that leave me with a sense of dread.

Serendipitously, a friend just sent me this beautiful quote by Cleo Wade:

“We rarely reach for ease. Even when it is within our grasp, we don’t give ourselves permission to sit in it… Ease has pretty much become a radical counterculture. It rejects our devotion to hustle and grind.”

I realize that I’ve been looking forward to the newborn post-partum period, because is it a time when I give myself permission to really sit in ease and simplicity. Sleepless nights navigating a crying baby and rollercoaster emotions? Sure, that will be incredibly challenging. But it’s also a protected time when I let myself really let go of “shoulds” around work, life, and future plans, and just settle into the simple daily work of resting and caring for a new human.

May that mindset of giving ourselves abundant permission to reach for and sit in ease and rest seep into our daily lives all the time, not just in these exceptional periods of extreme illness, parental leave, and retirement.