some of my thoughts
I write a little. Some of this is old and some of it new. I think my thinking has evolved over time.
Reflections on work: the first thing we do
When I get to the office I find the first thing I do is to go straight to my computer and fire it up to find out what it is telling me to do.
Why do I do this? Do I not know what I want to do for the day already?
I think I may be more effective if the first thing I do is something I had planned to do the night before, that did not involve a screen. Perhaps reading, or writing, or chatting with somebody. I wonder if I spent the first 15-30 mins of my day doing this whether I would have more ownership over my day.
If I had no clock...
The strange thing about checking the time is that it slows me down. The very act of checking the time takes time. Knowing that I am running late makes me stressed and less effective in doing what I need to do. Knowing that I am running early tends to relax me and slow me down.
However, there is that thing about deadlines and how they tend to make me get stuff done.
So then, would it be useful to not check my clock at certain times? Like in the morning when we are all rushing to get out the door. Would it be more useful to simply focus on the necessities of what what needs to be done, and let time take care of itself?
An experiment for the next week as I go back to work, and my mornings get doubly crazy.
Questions for mindfulness, not guilt
I have started to ask myself a series of questions each morning. They could easily be questions that elicit guilt within me. Part of the exercise is to remind myself that I ask myself these questions to encourage mindful decision making throughout my day. They are not to make me feel guilty.
These are the questions:
- What am I going to eat today?
- Who am I going to talk with today?
- What am I going to contribute today?
- What am I going to feed my brain with today?
- How am I going to move today?
- What time am I going to go to sleep tonight?
They seem like rhetorical questions, but I do not take them this way. When I answer 'pizza and chips' to the question 'what am I going to eat today?', I do not feel bad about this. I feel that I have made a deliberate decision to eat in that way, aware of what the impact will be on my body, and that tomorrow my body will need something different, and probably more nutritious.