A vital key to time management and overall health (and great speaking)

I spent the month of June recovering from an emergency appendectomy. Apart from childbirth and a relatively uncomplicated shoulder surgery, I’ve never really been “laid up” before. In some ways it has been a welcome, though forced, slowing of my natural rhythms. In other ways, it’s been a downright nuisance (e.g., surgical pain).

Post-surgical instructions included resting and not lifting more than 30lbs. for 30 days. I’m not allowed to do anything strenuous and even walking can’t be on much of an incline. So, I’ve curtailed all my professional tasks, allowed myself to rest when needed, and moseyed my way around the flat sections of my neighborhood for the last several weeks. 

On my first attempt to circumnavigate our block, I moved no faster than molasses in February and felt as tired as if I’d run a marathon. As my energy level has risen, I’ve been eager to go farther and faster, but each increase in distance or speed has landed me back in the recliner, spent from the effort and too fatigued to finish the remainder of my day without a nap.

Enter: Pacing

Pacing: to do something at a steady rate or a rate that prevents overexertion.

Overexertion is what sends me back to the easy chair after a too-strenuous walk. I’ve had to learn to navigate my walk (and all my daily tasks, really) at a sustainable pace—one that lets me finish my day without emotional or physical depletion. Determining how quickly I could walk, and for how far, was imperative to my recovery.

Pacing—mastering our time, if you will—is a skill necessary for our everyday health, not just when we’re recovering from surgery.

For anyone who finds the pace of their days resembles that of an Indy 500 race:

• Try to remember that life actually isn’t a race. We get swept into the fast-moving currents of our culture without making a conscious choice to do so. Tip: Take stock of your daily and weekly rhythms to see where they’re incongruent with your priorities. Remove commitments that don’t fit your values to slow the pace.
• Rest. This one is counter-intuitive to hard-working, task-oriented, productivity-driven folk. Yet rest is imperative to sustainability. In fact, rest is what enables us to persevere and even enhances performance, evidenced clearly in the fact that marathoners taking timed, planned walking breaks finish faster than when they’ve run the entire distance. Tip: Allow yourself a 20-minute nap each day during your circadian rhythm “trough.” Give yourself a full day off each week to rejuvenate your body, mind, and soul.

Similarly, pacing is an important aspect of effective public speaking:

• Pacing one’s rate of speech when talking to an audience is important because people can’t reread what you said the way they can in written form. Be sure to talk slowly enough to ensure your audience can follow your message. Tip: Know that you’re likely to speak more quickly when you’re anxious. Rehearse speaking slowly so that when you speed up on stage, you’ll naturally hit an optimal pace.
• Varying your rate of speech helps build momentum, retain interest, and non-verbally cue listeners to “pivots” in your talk. Tip: Assess your content for areas in which you’ll be sharing something exciting and practice increasing your cadence in that section. Be sure to practice slowing it back down, too, so listeners can regroup when the climax resolves.

I hope none of you requires an appendectomy—or any other surgery—to absorb the merits of pacing. If you find yourself in a chronic state of overexertion, let’s talk about how to rectify that (see the Cornerstone series on my coaching page). Just as in speaking, some seasons of our lives merit a faster pace. But they’re meant to be just that: seasons.

What can you do to slow your pace to one that’s sustainable for physical and emotional health?

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And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
–Genesis 2:3 NLT