Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [29]
Leverage your habits
While you wrestle with your brain’s silly unproductive habits, watch for opportunities to leverage the way your mind works to make it more likely that you’ll do the right thing.
Catching yourself surfing the web when your mind wanders at work? Yes, you can and perhaps should take advantage of software to block access to your problem sites after a certain number of minutes, but also consider the way your mind can be distracted onto the track with the right words and images.
Make a text file with your current top goals and set it to be your browser’s default home page. Then, you will see it every time you open a new tab or window. Choose a desktop image that reminds and motivates you to focus. Make sure the artwork in your office energizes you and reinforces your goals. As with your physical world, optimize what you see first and frequently—what launches on startup, what’s first in your dock or shortcut menus, what’s in your browser toolbars—so they reinforce your priorities.
Shift your tasks based on your energy and the tools at hand. If you don't work on an actual mechanized assembly line, why act like you do? I don't think the average human is satisfied by mechanistic repetition without variation. All the ergonomic experts come around, telling us to vary our physical positions in order to prevent unduly stressing our limbs, but I think you need to vary your mental position just as much.
If you tend to have an energy slump in the early afternoon, schedule meetings or routine tasks then. If the late morning and late afternoon tend to be when your brain is ticking at high speed, that's when you should do heavier mental lifting, such as in-depth testing of a complex problem or writing that is not based on previous work.
Microbreaks and nanobreaks
When work is very stressful due to more falling onto your plate than it can hold, fend off that overwhelmed feeling by taking a moment to remind yourself of the good things in your life. Even if you can’t take a full break and leave your desk, at least give yourself time to look out the window, stretch, and take a deep breath. Pulling yourself out of context with a microbreak when you feel the stress building will diffuse the tension and allow you to return to work a few seconds or minutes later with a fresh mind.
A variant on microbreaks, nanobreaks—a great enhancement to my stress-busting repertoire—are something I invented while working in a sad, beige cubicle. Stock your screen saver and a changing desktop pattern with pictures that make you happy: friends, flowers, landscapes, and other favorites. Then, when you need a little jolt of happiness, minimize your windows and discover something on your desktop to bring a smile to your face.
A second or two may not seem like it would make a difference, but it is profoundly useful, especially for any cube-dweller who doesn't have a beautiful view to use for recharging. Learn the keyboard shortcut or gesture on your system so it’s even easier. Your desktop pattern (or startup screen or any other frequently seen image under your control) can encourage you—not just jolly you up but actually create courage you can use to move toward your dreams.
Symptom #11: Argh! Email!
Solution #11: Ahhh! Working System
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
—William James, psychologist and philosopher
Clearing your mind and your virtual desk
So far, we focused on cleaning up your physical surroundings, but your digital ones can be a significant source of stress, too. The principles aren’t too different: Set up groupings that make subsequent