Recently, I read this post about accomplishment amnesia and I realized that this is me. This year has been a bit of a rough patch for me, and I noticed that as I’ve been starting to pull myself out of the hole I dug, as I started to feel better, I have been berating myself for not having more done. I was feeling constantly behind and wondering how things got like this.

So what is accomplishment amnesia?

We get so busy meeting our obligations and moving on that we forget a lot of the time that what we’ve done in the past has value. Writers, I think, are particularly afflicted by this. We’re so full of self-doubt and anxiety that we cannot even remember what we’ve done in the past. We get behind on goals and suddenly we’re useless. The thing that sucks about this is that we can stress ourselves out so much that we creatively block ourselves, or we devalue the work we’ve done already.

Remembering our accomplishments

Now, we’ve all been through that point where we start feeling better after a rough time and we realize how far behind on everything we are. We berate ourselves for not doing our job, even though that is exactly what we’ve been doing. I’m particularly afflicted by this. I set lofty, practically unattainable goals for myself. And when they don’t work out or the deadline I set for myself passes by, I freak out and start kicking myself for not getting anything done.

But the thing I have to remember, and I’m sure many others have this problem too, is that I am actually getting things done. It might not be at the incredible pace I want, but it’s there. These last couple months, I’ve had to deal with a lot. I had military training to deal with, kids going back to school, my graduation portfolio to tweak and assemble, normal monthly budgets and lots and lots of crazy work piling on in my design business that I hadn’t expected. I had to pull back. I stopped blogging here. I was writing until the graduation deadlines hit, and then I had to stop that for a couple weeks too. You can bet that not writing thing screwed with my head.

What was I doing with my time if I wasn’t writing?

Seriously. With all the things that were going on, I felt the most guilty for not writing. And there is a lot more that I’ve been doing in my personal life in the last month that I haven’t even mentioned. But I got things done. The only thing was that I didn’t blog and I didn’t write. So in my head, I hadn’t accomplished anything.

Everyone deals with this at one time or another.

People focus so hard on what they hadn’t gotten done, that they haven’t celebrated what they have done.

So let’s talk about what to do to break out of this.

The post I linked above has some great tips. I’m simply going to expound on how I deal with my accomplishment amnesia.

Celebrate what you have done.

It’s hard to do this. I have a lot of problems with remembering to do this. But today, I just turned in my last final. I have a paper to turn in after the person who gets it gets out of her meeting. And then you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go home, and have ice cream. Because I deserve it for accomplishing my task.

Rest when you can.

I know. It’s hard to sleep when you’re working hard. But your brain needs REM sleep. There are three different types of REM sleep. But if you don’t sleep enough, you can start hullicinating, or you can even die from lack of sleep. Your body needs that sleep. So, sometimes, when you’re busy, and behind on All The Things, the best thing you can do for yourself is stop and take a good night’s sleep.

Set small milestones.

If you’re like me, you tend to set lofty goals and then get pissed off when you don’t accomplish them. But in the process of not hitting that 90k word deadline, you wrote 50k. That’s an accomplishment many don’t ever see. So, instead of saying “90k or bust,” maybe we might be better off saying “20k or bust” on our way to that 90k.

Okay, that’s all I got. So, your turn. How do YOU deal with accomplishment amnesia?