Social Workers, Hustling Harder Is Not Always the Answer

by John Lim, RSW

     Growing up, hustling harder was always the answer. At 12, faced with the national exams, I learned to sleep at 10 and wake up at 4 to revise. At 12, I had my first taste of coffee and discovered that one didn’t need to sleep as much.

     At 12, I learned the hustle. And boy, did it feel good. It felt good to keep pushing and pushing, to tell people:

I woke at 4 this morning.

     And to be so tired. I was proud to be a hustler.

     When I started my social work degree, I took the inner hustler with me.

     After placements ended at 5 each day, I would take a bus home back to university. I would get on my bike, huff and pant up the hill, and then get in front of the computer to type out my essay. Dinner? Dinner was soy milk and granola, hastily splashed together in the office pantry, and gobbled in 10 minutes. Dinner…wasn’t important.

     After all, I was a social worker! Here to save the day of clients! Serve my clients, even if it meant big, personal sacrifices.

     Then one day, it happened. I found myself in a foreign place. There was a pile of dusty National Geographics by the side table. People sat quietly in the room, not talking to each other. A bouquet of flowers, although fake, hung limply in the vase at the counter. I was at a psychiatric clinic. Every half hour, he would come out with a smile, and call out the next name.

     He was the only one with a smile in the room.

     I was battling depression. It was a strange place to be. On one hand, I would be seeing clients as a social worker. They would tell me all their needs. On the other end, was me telling my therapist and psychiatrist what was wrong with me. I started being familiar with the medications clients were telling me about - Zoloft, Amitriptyline, and Fluoxetine.

     Fluoxetine held a soft spot... because I took them.

     It took depression for me to finally realize two things about hustling in social work.

Not hustling is okay.

     First, not hustling was okay. Just like tides push and pull back, managing social work can also be like waves. There are times when you need to keep pushing harder in social work.

     But there are other times when you simply need to pull back. Rest, relax, recharge. The question is: when, how often, how?

     I always remember asking my therapist:

How do you... how to? How long?

     He would smile and start laughing, Oh John, you’re very Singaporean, always asking me about how to! Do I look like a self-help book to you?

     There are no definite answers to how often you should hustle, how much you should rest, how much (or little) work you should do. But I’ve found a useful principle to be having a regular rhythm of rest. For example, I make sure that every week, one day is devoted to active rest. I cycle. Or play a group game like frisbee. Or go for a trek.

     Every six weeks, I take a weekend off or explore a new part of Singapore. It’s also been helpful to make sure that I’m packing to go 10 minutes before the end of work. With work from home, and blurred boundaries between home and work, hard boundaries defined by your clock work better than your mind, which is always tempted to say:

just 1 more email! 1 last case note!

     Fixed schedule productivity works far better because it cuts the wheat from the chaff, ensuring that you’re only focused on the things that matter.

It’s a joint walk, not John’s walk.

     When I’m hustling for change in social work, I find myself pushing clients beyond what they are ready for. My anxiety to work hard, be diligent, to push, sometimes obscures the fact that actually, right now, there’s nothing to be done. Not doing anything seems a travesty! What then are you paid for? To walk together with the client, not to pull the client along your journey.

     Take a deep breath when you’re feeling frustrated with the pace of change with a client you work with. Sometimes, it’s okay to do nothing. Let the passage of time do its work.

     I remember the day I couldn’t stop laughing. It was at a Toastmasters meeting. Someone had said something very funny. I turned red. People started wondering if I was okay physically (and mentally). But for the first time, I felt I could finally let go. Of needing to perform. To get a certain result for a client. And to simply just enjoy life as it came, when it came, trusting that whatever came, I didn’t have to hustle and fight my way out.

     I could simply do it one day at a time, one step at a time, and one breath at a time.

John Lim is a registered social worker and currently works at a Family Service Centre in Singapore. He is excited about helping young people to work with passion and purpose and writes regularly at liveyoungandwell.com.