• By X age, I should have this job.

• By X age, I should be further along than I am, or have more saved, or be further past whatever I’m still working through.

The list doesn’t have a name, but it runs in the background, quietly grading me against a version of my life I never actually agreed to.

I noticed it clear as day in a warm yoga class. Ten minutes in, the instructor said, “Meet yourself where you are.” A simple line that left me not breathing or leaving everything at the door.

Here’s what I think that line was actually telling me. We’re so busy being who we should be by now, and we forget to notice who we actually are.

Most days, we’re managing the gap between where we are and where we decided we were supposed to be. That decision usually wasn’t even ours. It came from a timeline we absorbed without agreeing to it. The problem is we keep score against a schedule nobody handed us, and somehow, we picked it up somewhere and never put it down.

Meeting yourself where you are isn’t resignation. It’s refusing to make your current life feel like a failure simply because it doesn’t match the timeline you imagined.

So this week, month, year, wherever the “should be by now” list runs in your head, I’d ask you to look at it. Not to erase it, to notice it’s there. Then set it down for a minute and look at what’s actually in front of you. It’s not a stop on the way to the real thing. It is the real thing.

Meet yourself where you are, and not where you think you should be.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at a local SHRM conference on the topic of respect beats being nice. We started off thinking less about the 9-5 corporate life and more about the colorful days of kindergarten. If we close our eyes and sit back in that space, we can imagine colors, numbers, letters, and maybe some rules. During that time, we were taught that we should be nice to others in some capacity. I remember my dad telling me, and to this day he continues to remind me, that “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.” Sound familiar?

Let’s flip the script, though, because Ms. Aretha Franklin taught us that all we are asking is a little respect. So, how does respect beat nice?

Nice and Respect Aren’t the Same Word

Here’s where it gets useful. Nice and respect have been sitting in for each other for years, wearing each other’s clothes, and nobody’s called it out.

Nice looks like avoiding discomfort, keeping the peace, saying what people want to hear, not upsetting anyone, and being liked.

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The great Drew Brees was inducted into the Hall of Fame this past week. As a Saints fan and a Louisianan, this is major. I will never forget watching the Super Bowl in 2010 when Drew led our Saints to a victory. Given his induction this weekend, I saw a clip on social media of an injury he suffered in 2005 before coming to the Saints. As I watched it, I wondered how much recovery time he needed before returning to the field and eventually making history for New Orleans only a few years later.

It got me thinking about how much recovery is built into an athlete’s life. There are periods of training, competition, rest, rehabilitation, and recovery. It isn’t something athletes wait to do until they have completely run themselves into the ground. Recovery is part of the job.

So why do we treat it differently for ourselves as ordinary humans?

This is your reminder to give yourself recovery time, but the kind that is not solely before the start of a semester, a new job, or a project, but regularly. Schedule it. Protect it. Make it part of your routine. You should also consider that your version of recovery will look different from someone else’s, just like it does for athletes. It might be daily, weekly, or monthly. It might look like:

• Reading a book to feel engrossed in a fictional world away from the chaos of everyday life

• Treating yourself to a coffee out after making it at home all week to save a few dollars

• Sitting outside with loved ones (furry ones included) to soak up fresh air and some vitamin D

• Taking some much-needed PTO because we earn it, so we should use it

It took me a while to realize this, but I don’t give myself enough recovery time.

By the time my recovery period is over, I find it is so much harder to get back on track after my rest because I waited so long to recover. The core message here is that my once-a-semester intersession break was not enough.

Recently, I’ve found that what works is a weekly recovery. For me, every Saturday, before the relaxation (or the chaos) begins, I take time to grab a coffee outside the house or to take the dog for a walk. This isn’t just giving my body a break. It gives my mind a chance to reset too.

We don’t have to throw a ball across the field to need recovery time. As ordinary humans, our bodies and minds perform every day, whether at work, at home, for our families, or for ourselves. If elite athletes can build recovery into the process of becoming better at what they do, maybe we can give ourselves permission.

Drew Brees didn’t skip his recovery to get here faster. He did the work, healed on purpose, and came back better for it. The piece worth borrowing is that recovery isn’t the pause before your comeback, it’s part of the journey.

So before you fill next week’s calendar to the edges, pencil in your version of recovery first, whether it is a walk, a coffee, or a morning that’s yours. See what comes back stronger when you do.

Go on and conquer, my friends.

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For instance, we have full-time professionals working their full-time, 9-5 office job. Then that same person may also have a “gig” on the side.

The big question for us working fools: How do we know which hat we’re wearing today? This hour? This second?

I have taken every behavioral and personality test out there: DiSC, Emergenetics, Myers-Briggs, random Buzzfeed quizzes, and I can tell you one thing. I am a structured queen. I need structure in my life to thrive. If it isn’t there, I will find it or make it. According to one of the tests, I’m an Arranger. If something isn’t working out the way it should, or doesn’t make sense, I make it make sense.

So if you’re reading this and struggling to know which hat you’re wearing today, here’s what has worked for me.

• Change the outfit for real, not just in your head. I take the metaphor literally. When I close my work laptop, I don’t leave it open “just in case”; I physically shut it before I open the one for school. When I leave the office for the day, I make sure my desk is clean and ready for the next morning because I don’t know how tomorrow will start. I want to walk in feeling fresh and ready to hit the ground running. It sounds small, but these micro-moments of “shutting off” are the only signal my brain gets that the attire is changing.

• Ask one question before you respond to anything: which hat? A text from a classmate, an email from a coworker, a request from my husband, they all show up in the same inbox that is my brain. Before I react to any of it, I ask which hat. It stops me from answering a school email with my “professional” voice or trying to solve a work problem while I’m supposed to be fully present as a wife.

• Know which hat gives you energy back. Not all hats cost the same. Some drain you, and some, even on the hardest days, hand a little bit of yourself back to you. For me, it’s the dog mom hat. A break with my dog resets me faster than anything else on this list. Figure out which hat does that for you, and intentionally protect time for it, not just when there’s time left over.

• Give yourself permission to not wear every hat well today. This is the hardest one for a structured person like me. Some days, the goal isn’t balance, it’s triage. Knowing which hat gets your best effort today, and which one just gets your bare minimum, is its own kind of skill. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed the other hats. It means you know yourself well enough to choose.

The Closet of Life

Here’s the part I have to remind myself of the most: not every hat gets chosen by you.

This idea actually comes from my grandmother. She was a woman of many talents, and her best one was fashion (and yes, that is a talent). When she passed, she’d been living her best life in Key West, Florida, in a home with two staging rooms, not closets. Inside each one was everything you could imagine – hats, shoes, vintage clothing, you name it, she had it. She would pick them up from thrift stores or friends. Sometimes she would remind me that the item chose her.

Inside your own life closet, or staging room, is every role you carry, lined up and ready. Most days, you’re the one standing in front of it, deciding what to put on, but that’s the part you control: which hat you reach for, when you switch it out, how you show up in it.

But some days, something happens outside the closet entirely – a phone call, a diagnosis, a sick kid, a work fire, and it reaches in and hands you a hat before you’ve even had your first cup of coffee. You didn’t choose it. You don’t get a say in the timing. You just have to wear it.

The skill isn’t preventing that from happening. It will happen, and that’s called life, not a scheduling problem. The skill is noticing the difference between the hat you chose and the hat you were handed, and giving yourself grace on the days it’s the latter. A hat you didn’t choose is allowed to fit a little worse, sit a little heavier, and take you a little longer to adjust to. That’s not you failing at the juggle. That’s just what it looks like when life reaches into your closet without asking.

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If you consider life like a mixed drink, no two drinks may be the same. Before we head to happy hour, let’s break down a given week.

There are 168 hours in a week. Let’s break that down: 40 hours are spent in the office. Then we try to get 7-8 hours of sleep each night, cook, spend time with family, and commute, and just like that, over half the week is gone. Now add healthy habits and simply being a human to the mix. Then, let’s say you’ve got this itch to go back to school… how much is really left for you to do that, on top of everything else, while working full-time?

That’s the real question for anyone considering it: as a full-time employee going back to school, what does that actually mean for your day-to-day? How are you supposed to juggle it all with the number of hours you’re given?

As a doctoral student who already holds two separate degrees, I don’t have the perfect cocktail for anyone. I can tell you what works for me, and you might relate to some of it, but at the end of the day, each person is their own mixology in life. So as you read this, keep that in mind.

Ingredient 1: Create Your Pack

You need a wolf pack in every layer of your life — work, personal, and school. I have one in each. My school friends sometimes flow into my personal bucket, but they’re still a distinct group. One friend is strictly school as we met in class and get each other through the coursework. Another I met through work, and we ended up going back to school together; she works full-time and has a family, and she just gets it. A third I met through a mutual friend, and she’s still my cheerleader through all of it.

Work and personal life live in different worlds. We go to work, then go home to different realities and some of us with kids, some without. Personal friends often share a similar life stage but different careers. School is its own thing entirely. Those classmates keep you grounded in a way the others can’t, because they’re in the trenches with you.

Ingredient 2: AI Is a Tool

My first semester back, after a five-year break from school, was a challenge. COVID had flipped education upside down. I work in higher education, but being a student instead of a professional was a different experience entirely. I felt old in class and behind everyone else.

I also started my first semester back in educational statistics. I thought I was good with numbers until day one, when I learned that “statistic” isn’t really math. Great. And the class was fully online, but I wanted social interaction and human connection. Instead, I got a YouTube channel of lecture recordings.

Honestly, AI taught me statistics. To be clear, I did not use it to give me answers. I still struggled through every bit of it. But I used it as a tutor: “Help me understand this concept as if I’m a 5th grader.” “My professor said this in lecture, but I’m not following what she means, can you help me understand it?” “Can you give me a clearer visual than the one in the textbook?” Used that way, it didn’t replace the learning. It made the learning possible.

Ingredient 3: Treat School Time Like a Meeting

By my third semester, I’d come home and just want to vegetate. I’d want to sit on the couch with the dog and watch reality TV. But I couldn’t. That’s when the school guilt set in. I knew I should be reading, writing a forum post, responding to a classmate, but a year in, the motivation was gone. I debated whether I’d made the right call going back to school at all. Some days, I still do. I’d sacrificed starting a family, taking vacations, and — the one that stings most — time with the family I already have.

Eight months in, my dad was unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. It was devastating. But strangely, it was also the reason I didn’t quit. I started scheduling time in my day — one hour to read an article, work on an assignment, or just write, and I treated it like a meeting I couldn’t skip. One hour. One hour I gave back to myself. If I could find an hour to work out, I could find one more for school.

So if you’re thinking about going back to school, just do it. Many employers will pay for it. Use it the way you’d use PTO or health insurance: it’s a benefit that’s already yours. Take it. You will figure out your own mixed drink of the week and how to manage the hours within it.

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