I am currently in my seventh year with the same company. My bosses work in a separate office and I’m a senior person on a lot of my projects, which means I have a lot of flexibility to arrange my own time, throughout each day and then across the week.
Recently, I’ve felt a bit in a work rut. A lot of it has to do with the amount of work I have (not an overwhelming amount) and the way consulting has trained my brain to only work on urgent tasks. Some of it has been the constant news – news news news news news – all the time, every time, almost always crazy.
On days when I’m not that productive, I feel sort of bummed out. Moody, depressed – like I didn’t do enough work at work so don’t fully get to go home.
I’ve been thinking through creating a new morning work ritual. It would include:
- Turning my laptop on and letting it load up. In this period, I can putz around on my phone, but not open the internet to look at any news, information, etc.
- Opening my email – both work and personal – to see if there is anything urgent. Reply to anything urgent.
- Closing the internet and disconnecting my work email from the server.
- Choosing my most important tasks for the day & writing these down on paper.
- Setting a timer for 45 minutes and doing the tasks — without email or other distractions – and while standing at my desk.
- Taking a break to get a cup of coffee.
- Setting a timer for 45 minutes and doing the tasks — without email or other distractions – and while standing at my desk.
That’s it — basically aiming for two periods of at least 45-minutes of focused work to start my morning. I likely wouldn’t be able to do this every day (and would love to come up with a different ritual for days I work from home) but think it would be great for those days where I don’t have a lot of meeting and have long periods of time.
