How a Cyclical Approach to Life and Planning Healed My “Productivity = Self-Worth” Mindset

For a very long time, I believed that my worth was directly connected to what I was able to achieve.

I don’t think it was even consciously to begin with, it was just something I grew up with. I think many of us were taught to believe the better we did at school, the harder we worked the more we were praised — that’s where it starts.

Not consciously, perhaps, and certainly not in a way I would have articulated at the time, because if you had asked me whether I believed that my value as a human being depended on how much I could get done, I would have said no.

I just wanted to do better. Be the best I could.

I wanted to look and feel good, workout, socialise, be good at my job. I was just doing all the things and not even thinking about rest as a need at all!

I would never tell another person that they had to earn their right to rest, receive love or take up space through their achievements.

And yet, somewhere beneath the surface, this was exactly what I was doing to myself.

I had created an internal system in which productivity became proof that i was doing enough, that I was moving forward. Proof that I was not falling behind.

Proof that I was successful, disciplined, capable and worthy of being proud of myself.

The days when I had completed everything on my list, answered the emails, planned the event, worked on the projects, exercised, eaten well, kept the house tidy and somehow managed to fit in all of the other invisible tasks that make up a life were the days when I felt most comfortable in myself.

The days when I had not achieved very much, even if I had been tired, overwhelmed, unwell, emotionally processing something, or simply needed to rest, were the days when I would quietly begin to question myself. Berate myself…. And to be honest, I didn’t let those days happen often.

Usually, I ignored my body and the exhaustion and pushed through anyway.

I did not know how to separate my productivity from my identity. And I certainly didn’t know back then that rest was a part of the process, that the illnesses were a sign my body needed me to slow down.

I knew how to work hard, but I didn’t know how to stop.

I knew how to create goals, plans, routines and schedules, but I didn’t know how to listen to the quieter messages coming from my body.

I knew how to push through, be consistent, to keep going when I was tired. I didn’t know that there was any other way to live.

But there is another way: A way of working with the natural fluctuations of energy, capacity, creativity and desire rather than expecting myself to produce the same version of myself every single day.

It was discovering a cyclical approach to life that began to change everything.

But even after my health crashed and I had to rebuild my life and who I was from the ground up, I still struggled with the way most planning systems work. I couldn’t get my new cyclical way of living to align with the planning.

In the end, I built my own system for planning cyclically. And it works great…. But what I really realised in this process is that it isn’t the system itself that’s the problem, but the ingrained mindset and the inherited beliefs that were keeping me stuck.

I couldn’t change the habits until I changed the patterns underneath them that were the real trigger.

The problem was not that I loved being productive

I want to be clear that it’s not that I believe productivity is inherently bad. Just like anything, it’s how you approach it.
I enjoy creating things.
I enjoy having ideas and bringing them into the world.
I enjoy working towards something meaningful and seeing an idea develop from a tiny spark into something tangible that can support, inspire or help another person — There is a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from completing something that matters to you, and I don’t think we need to reject ambition, goals, achievement or the desire to grow in order to heal our relationship with productivity

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The problem was not that I wanted to do things. The problem was that I had begun to believe that I was only valuable when I was doing things.
There is a huge difference between I enjoy creating and I must constantly create in order to feel good about myself.
There is a huge difference between I have a goal I would like to work towards and I am failing if I am not constantly moving towards that goal.

There is a huge difference between I want to be productive today and I must be productive today in order to feel worthy of the day.

For years, I thought the answer was to become better at managing myself. I was seeing rest as a barrier to what I wanted and where I wanted to be. As a detour that meant I was falling behind any time I needed to take a break, rather than something that would help me achieve my goals faster, more concisely, and actually feed my passion, energy and creativity.

I thought I needed a better planner, a more detailed schedule, a more efficient morning routine or a more disciplined approach to time management.
I thought that if I could just organise my life perfectly enough, I would finally feel on top of everything.
But the more I tried to control myself into becoming consistently productive, the more disconnected from myself I became.

Because the truth is that we are not machines.
We do not have the same amount of energy every day.
We do not have the same emotional capacity, the same mental clarity, the same creativity or the same physical needs every day.
And yet so many of us have created lives and planning systems based on the assumption that we should.
We create a schedule for our most energetic self and then feel guilty when our body cannot maintain it.
We plan as though every day will be equally spacious, equally focused and equally predictable.
We expect ourselves to produce the same output on a day when we have slept well, feel inspired and have plenty of energy as we do on a day when our nervous system is overwhelmed, our body needs rest or we are moving through something emotionally difficult.
And when we cannot, we assume the problem is us.

I had been trying to live in a straight line for so many years, but we just aren’t built to work that way!

Rest IS Part of the Process

The biggest shift for me came when I began to recognise how much of my life had been built around a linear model of productivity.
Start here.
Work harder.
Do more.
Move forward.
Achieve the goal.
Set the next goal.
Repeat.
There was always somewhere else to get to.
A better version of myself to become.
A new level to reach.
A new project to complete.
A new habit to perfect.
A new problem to solve.

And even when I achieved the thing I had been working towards, the satisfaction was often incredibly short-lived because the moment the goal was complete, my mind immediately moved on to the next thing.

There was always another mountain, another list, another target. Another way I could improve myself.

The cyclical approach to life offered me a completely different way of understanding progress. Instead of imagining my life as a straight line, I began to see it as a series of cycles.
Day and night.
Inhale and exhale.
Expansion and contraction.
Activity and rest.
Growth and release.
Beginning and ending.
The seasons.
The moon.
The menstrual cycle.
The natural rhythms of the body.
The natural rhythms of life itself.

And when I began to understand that these cycles were not obstacles to productivity but part of the process of creation, I started to question everything I had been taught about what it meant to be successful.

Perhaps rest was not the opposite of progress.
Perhaps reflection was not wasted time.
Perhaps pausing did not mean I was falling behind.
Perhaps letting go was not failure.
Perhaps the quieter phases of life were not interruptions to the real work.
Perhaps they were the work.

A cyclical approach changed the way I planned

The first practical shift was moving away from planning as a way of controlling my time and towards planning as a way of working with my energy.
This sounds like a subtle difference, but for me it was profound.

My planning became about me, my health, my nervous system, and what felt good, rather than how much I could cram into a day.

My plans focused around how I felt, what my energy level were, what moon phase we were in, and what season before they focused on work.

I looked to nature for inspiration and timing….

A seed underground is not failing because it is not yet flowering.
The tree does not apologise for losing its leaves.
The land does not remain in perpetual bloom simply because blooming is beautiful — there are seasons of rest, seasons of release and seasons of growth, and still everything is beautiful —
And slowly, I began to realise that I did not need to always be blooming and growing either.

There are time where inner growth and replenishment are my goals, and that does not make me any less successful.

I started planning for my whole life, not just my work

One of the most important things I have learned is that productivity culture encourages us to separate our lives into things that count and things that do not.
Work counts.
Achievements count.
Money counts.
Visible progress counts.

But rest?
Relationships?
Play?
Being outside?
Cooking a nourishing meal?
Processing an emotion?
Sleeping?
Doing nothing?

These things are often treated as optional extras that we can fit in once the important work is done. The problem is that the important work is never done, there is always another email. Another task. Another idea. Another piece of content. Another thing to clean. Another thing to organise. Another way to improve.

And so the things that make life feel like life are endlessly postponed.

And that’s not a way I want to live. Just thinking about it now make me feel like the joy has been sapped out of me — and that’s how it felt living that life.

The things I loved were an afterthought that I never got around to enjoying.

A cyclical approach helped me understand that these things are not separate from my productivity or my success.
They are part of the ecosystem that makes everything else possible.

A truly holistic approach.

I cannot endlessly create without replenishing myself.
I cannot constantly give without receiving.
I cannot remain in expansion without eventually needing contraction.
I cannot keep producing without allowing myself to be nourished by the world around me.

And the most important thing is I no longer want to!

I’m no longer willing to sacrifice the joy and creativity for the sake of feeling ‘successful’. This meant that rest stopped being something I had to earn. Instead, it became something I planned for because I understood that recovery, restoration and spaciousness were essential parts of the process.

I began to block time in my calendar just for me, with nothing planned.
Time when I could be outside.
Time to read.
Time to think.
Time to do absolutely nothing.
Time for my body.
Time for my relationships.
Time for the things that did not have an obvious outcome.
And initially, this felt incredibly uncomfortable.
Because if I was not doing something productive, what was I doing?
The answer, of course, was living.
I had to learn that rest does not need to be justified; it doesn’t need an outcome other than enjoyment.

And so I began finding success in my fulfilment.

How relaxed I felt

How much I felt my creativity returning

How better I started sleeping

How happy I felt after a day of exploring.

I think one of the most challenging parts of this process was recognising how often I was trying to justify my need for rest.
I was allowed to rest if I was ill.
I was allowed to rest if I had worked very hard.
I was allowed to rest if I had completed everything I needed to do.
I was allowed to rest if I had achieved enough.
But what if I simply needed to rest because I was a human being with a body that had limits?
What if I did not need a reason?
What if tiredness was information rather than an inconvenience?
What if my body was not trying to sabotage my plans but trying to communicate with me?

This was a huge shift for me.
Because when you have spent years believing that your worth is connected to your productivity, rest can feel strangely threatening.
It creates space for all of the thoughts you have been outrunning.
It removes the distraction of constant doing.
It asks you to meet yourself without the achievement, the busy schedule or the list of completed tasks standing between you and your own sense of worth.
And sometimes, that is uncomfortable.

There is a LOT of shadow work and self-awareness in this process that’s uncomfortable and confronting.

Sometimes, you discover that the reason you have been so busy is not because there is genuinely so much to do, but because being busy has become a way of avoiding the fear of not being enough.
This is where the deeper healing began for me.
Because I could create all of the cyclical planning systems in the world, but if I still believed that I had to earn my right to rest, I would simply find a more beautiful and spiritual way to overwork myself.
The tools were helpful.
The seasons were helpful.
The moon was helpful.

But ultimately, I had to begin asking myself:
Who am I when I am not achieving anything?
Can I still believe I am worthy on a day when I have done very little?
Can I trust that my life is still moving forward even when I cannot see visible progress?
Can I allow myself to be a person rather than a project?

My planning became a conversation rather than a set of instructions
The way I plan now feels much more like a conversation with myself.
I still have goals.
I still have projects.
I still make plans.
I still have things I want to achieve.
But instead of asking myself to fit my body and energy around the plan, I allow the plan to respond to the reality of my life.

This means I might have a list of priorities for a season, a moon cycle, but I am not expecting myself to complete every single one of them in exactly the same way every week.
It means I might have a plan for the day, but I am willing to change that plan if my capacity changes.
It means I have learned to distinguish between what is genuinely important and what is simply urgent.
It means I no longer assume that every idea needs to be acted upon immediately.
It means I can have a season of planting ideas without needing to harvest them straight away.

And perhaps most importantly, it means I no longer measure the value of my day solely by how much I have managed to accomplish.
Sometimes the most productive thing I can do is finish the task.
Sometimes the most productive thing I can do is take a step back.
Sometimes I need to move forward.
Sometimes I need to pause.
Sometimes I need to start again.
And none of these states are a reflection of my worth.

The greatest lesson has been that I am not behind
I think this is the belief that has changed the most for me. For so many years, I felt as though I was behind…..Behind where I thought I should be, the person I believed I could become, behind the timelines I had created in my own mind, compared to everyone else. And because I believed I was behind, I was constantly trying to catch up. And that’s exhausting.

But a cyclical approach to life has taught me that there is no universal timeline. There is no point at which you are supposed to have figured everything out.
There is no perfect age by which you must have achieved your dreams.
There is no single path that everyone is meant to follow.
There are seasons of moving quickly and seasons of moving slowly. Seasons when everything seems to come together and seasons when the most important thing you can do is allow yourself to be held by the stillness.

The fact that something is taking longer than you expected does not mean you are failing.
The fact that you need to begin again does not mean you have gone backwards.
The fact that your life looks different from the life you imagined does not mean you have wasted your time.
You are allowed to change.
You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to take the long way.
You are allowed to grow in ways that are not immediately visible.
You are allowed to be in the middle of the process.

A cyclical life is not about doing less forever
I think it is important to say that a cyclical approach is not about rejecting productivity or deciding that you should never have goals, structure or ambition.
It is not about using your energy as an excuse to avoid the things that matter to you.
It is not about waiting until you feel perfectly motivated before taking action.
And it is not about believing that every day should be slow, gentle and effortless.

There are days when we need to show up even when we do not feel like it.
There are seasons when we need to work hard.
There are moments when discipline is necessary.
There are times when we need to push through discomfort in order to grow.

But there is a difference between consciously choosing challenge and being trapped in a constant state of self-abandonment.
There is a difference between working hard because something matters to you and working hard because you are terrified of what it means if you stop.
There is a difference between ambition that comes from desire and ambition that comes from believing you are not enough.

The cyclical approach has not made me less ambitious.
If anything, it has allowed me to become more intentional about what I am actually moving towards.
I am no longer trying to do everything.
I am trying to do the things that matter.
I am no longer trying to become a completely different person.
I am trying to become more fully myself.
I am no longer trying to maximise every minute.
I am trying to create a life that I actually want to experience.
And that, for me, is the real healing.

The other great revelation for me was that the more frequently I rest, the MORE I actually get done!

Taking action when you are fuelled, resourced, rested and full of creative ideas has meant that I’m actually getting more done in less time, and with all the rest in between, it barely feels like work anymore.

You do not have to earn your right to exist
If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it is this:
You do not have to earn your right to rest.
You do not have to complete your to-do list before you are allowed to feel proud of yourself.
You do not have to constantly be improving in order to be worthy.
You do not have to turn yourself into a project that is forever in need of fixing.
You are allowed to be a human being.
A person with energy that changes.
A person with needs.
A person who sometimes feels inspired and sometimes feels tired.
A person who sometimes moves forward and sometimes needs to pause.
A person who is still worthy on the days when you do not create anything.
A person who is still worthy when you are not achieving.
A person who is still worthy when you are in the messy, uncertain, unfinished middle.

A cyclical approach to life and planning did not heal my relationship with productivity because it taught me how to become more productive.
It healed it because it taught me that productivity was never supposed to be the measure of my worth in the first place. It helped me see outside of myself and the narrow path I’d built for myself.

I am not here to squeeze every possible drop of output from myself.
I am here to live.
To create.
To rest.
To grow.
To release.
To begin again.
To move through all of the seasons of being human.
And perhaps the most radical thing I have learned is that I do not need to do all of that perfectly.

I simply need to keep coming back to myself.
Season by season, moment by moment. One day at a time.