I recently wrote an article entitiled “Making Time for Your Pre-work Rituals” over at Web Worker Daily. If you’re the type of person who goes through several routine tasks before you get down to work, such as cleaning your office or writing to your friends, the article might be of interest to you. Here are some of the highlights:
Whether you clean your office or have a more elaborate routine, pre-work rituals are an essential part of your workday. Here are some ways in which they help:
- Builds your mindset. You might not be aware of it, but pre-work rituals can help you establish your work rhythms for the rest of the day.
- Keeps you energized. Before you start work, whether your workday has just begun or you’re returning from a short break, it’s important to have rituals that will energize you and allow you to regroup after grueling mental gymnastics.
- Shifts your perspective. This is especially true for the things you do during breaks. For me, I find that walking my dog or working on a carpentry project for a brief period allows me to stop my train of thought and focus on something else. After I’m done with that, I go back to my work with a fresh perspective and approach it in unexpected ways.
If you can identify with these ideas, feel free to read the article.
Personally, my pre-work rituals include making tea, eating breakfast, and typing up whatever novel I happen to be reading at the time. After a few minutes of typing, I get caught up in the rhythm of pounding the keyboard and start work on my own stuff.
Do you have any pre-work rituals?
If you enjoyed this post, you might like these:
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:46 am
Noticing the scratch mark on the Ctrl, Alt and Del buttons of my keyboard, the cat that shares his territory with us, has very high standards when it comes to the things I write. Thus one important part of the daily ritual involves soothing his temper with offerings. And keeping the door shut. My typical pre-work rituals depend on the kind of work: writing, editing, programming or administration, they each require other tactics. It also depends largely on whose biorhythm I’m following: my own (night) or the grocery’s downstairs (day).
Overall, the ritual includes making coffee. Doing the dishes (reaching ultimate state of Zen, an excellent way of preventing ‘morning’ temper). Making another coffee. Make a nice breakfast. Drink some coffee. Read the news. Fiddling with the pc. Checking my agenda. Fiddle some more and by then actually doing stuff which probably will continue until closing time. Occasionally there are people who want my attention. If not, I call them to ask why they don’t bother me. One important parameter of the workflow is music. I have music that really kicks the roof of production (or feeling productive) and sadly, if it reaches it’s peak, I get so excited that I pick up my guitar and start playing which easily can take on for hours. Put it’s actually part of the ritual. Not always, but sometimes. It’s creative. It’s fun.
Another typical thing to do is, playing sudoku before I start programming difficult stuff. It helps me ‘restructure’ my brain in a way that I can store a lot more information in it, without loosing my way. Often I find myself just walking around, thinking about solutions. Or squeezing my brain for new thoughts. That’s also a ritual thing, I guess. Making circles like Sherlock Holmes.
So I’m a lot in my head, and many times I don’t know what I’m doing, whom I’m talking to, or in which room I was planning to do what. Distracted? Not really. I can be concentrated for hours non stop. But I need the space to reflect, to drop off seeds in different layers. So most of my rituals involve using other (creative) ways or tools, which might look as being distracted, but clearly isn’t. Because after a while it’s a rich harvesting. Then all those things come together as a giant puzzle getting completed. Elementary, my dear Watson.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
I used to have a lot of rituals before I start my work. I wouldn’t start without tidying up my work desk first, wiping the dust from my computer, and sanitizing the keyboard and mouse in an obsessive-compulsive fashion. It was okay when I was in an office, but when I work at home sometimes I end up cleaning the whole room! While this helped me organize my thoughts, it came to the point that I couldn’t start at all, especially when we moved to a bigger place and no one else would clean up the house but me (I end up cleaning the whole place).
Now I’ve learned to ignore the mess and just jump right in, do my best to focus (I’m the most scatter-brained person in the world), and shut out distractions (except when the kitties start clawing my leg or try to ram down the door because they missed their meals in a row).
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:51 am
I find that cleaning up a bit is fine, but to do the entire room or the entire house can take so much time and energy that you can’t get back to work. My version of your ritual has more to do with food. Instead of making a simple sandwich or grabbing an easy snack, sometimes I cook up an entire meal, delaying my work for several hours.
Oh and I know about those kitties. I have two of them. I call them “editors”.
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:52 am
Good to see your new blog… I have two… feed the cats… if I don’t there will be no possibility of thinking through the meows and leg rubbing. And I’ve got to have coffee… or in my case a home made cappuccino.
Then I can start writing.
Anne Wayman, now blogging at http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:54 am
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your ritual Anne
I was a subscriber of The Golden Pencil for a long time, but now this means that I’ll be adding your new blog to my feed reader 