3 Keys Thursday: 3 Key End-of-Day Habits

Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

These days, I'm spending a lot of time in my home office. As someone who often struggles to draw the line between work and home, I need something that says "day is done" and that leaves my workspace looking welcoming at the start of each day.

Until recently, I've never been very good at the "clear off your desk at the end of the day" routine but, ever since my last desk revamp a few months ago, I've been committed to doing just that. The first of my three end-of-day habits to emerge was clear my desk, an unmistakable sign that work time is drawing to a close.

Clearing off my desk is actually the second thing I do. The first is to set my table up for morning. I have a small, round table that was in my parents' house and ended up in my office by accident, which turned out to be serendipitous. I've always wanted an L-shaped desk, but my office is too small to support a desk that size. The small table, currently to the right of me (I'm right-handed) holds the materials I need for today's tasks.  At the end of the day, everything on the table either goes in the trash (lists), away (if I'm finished with it) or back on the table for the next day.

My final task is to put the pillows back on my chair. When I splurged on my new desk chair, I also made it home to a white lace pillow that had been my mom's, a small fleece throw and a pillow that says "I never met a chocolate I did not like." At the start of each day, I take the pillows off so I can sit in the chair and work and, at the end of the day, returning those pillows to their places signals close of business before I even leave the room. And, since this room has no door, having a signal like that is an important step in sharpening the line between work and home.

Though I don't always stop working completely after I "shut down" my office, taking these three steps to draw a line leaves me with a sense of peace and accomplishment and, even better, it makes
my office a space I want to walk into the next day.

How about you? When work and home lines blur, how do you separate one from the other?

Friday Feature: Routines

Funny story: This post doesn't belong here. It belongs on my other blog, The Porch Swing Chronicles. But, since routines go with Organizing by STYLE and because the irony of it all does not escape me, I'm leaving it here and posting it there as well.

One caveat, though. I'm not "here" (on this blog) Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I post here on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The past few weeks have been peppered with a variety of things that have wrecked my routine. Some were mundane, others more serious and needing immediate attention, but the end result, once everything had been taken care of, was me feeling overwhelmed and off-kilter.

This week, I've been trying to fall back into my routine, but everything from sloth to interruptions to an unanticipated need to recover from all of this routine-busting has created a pile-up of obstacles. Yesterday, my husband came home sick and spent the day resting in order to recuperate. I had a list of things I'd intended to do to get me back on track but, once I'd finished the ones outside the house, I quickly fell into a rest-to-recuperate cycle of my own, accomplishing only a fraction of what I'd set out to do. Even this blog, a regular part of my week every week for over a decade, was one of the casualties.

Once upon a time, I equated routine with boring, something that becomes increasingly less true as I get older and crave the sense of calm (and accomplishment) that routine can bring with it. Routines, as it turns out, are good for us not only in terms of productivity, but also in terms of creativity. Putting some things on autopilot, or on o a perpetual to-do list keeps us from having to worry about when -- or whether -- they'll get done. They can actually be an important part of our mental health as well, easing anxiety and keeping us focused when simply staying focused requires more energy than we have available.

If you're a regular reader, I apologize for disrupting your routine by making this post unavailable on its usual day. If you're finding me for the first time, I hope you'll drop by again. I'm here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

It's part of my routine.

The Balance of Summer

What's on your yellow sticky note?
(Photo: darkmoon1968 via Pixabay)

This summer, for the first time, I am teaching a class. I've taught little mini classes -- classes that last a week or less -- in the past with elementary students but, this summer, I'm teaching a semester's worth of college material in a five week summer session. Monday through Thursday, I teach for two hours a day. Before class, I finalize my lesson and in the afternoons and evenings, I make time to grade papers, create exams and prepare for the next day's class.

It's not a tough gig -- I've taught the material before, and it's a small class of students who can be nudged fairly easily into discussion -- but it's a challenge because it's new and because, once again, my routine has shifted.

Last week, I wrote about my simultaneous need for and dislike of routines. When I worked as a school counselor, one of my favorite things about my job was that no two days were the same. There was a predictability from one day to the next, in that my days began and ended at about the same time and, for the most part, took place in the same building. Other than that, they could be filled with all sorts of different things -- meetings, classes, chats with kids and staff on a wide variety of topics -- and that kept things interesting.

It's only as I write this now that I realize that I once again have a similar sort of routine (finally), but find it frustrating. Only one of my jobs (teaching) begins and ends at roughly the same time each day, but the tasks necessary for its completion exceed the boundaries of that time frame. Between its insistence on seeping into time outside of the classroom (a necessary occupational hazard) and the fact that my other job (writing) needs to be completed within the those same out-of-class time frames,  I often feel that no matter what I'm doing, I should be doing something else.

While I find a certain amount of routine comforting, too much routine leaves me feeling trapped and too much to do leaves me feeling stressed. Without a routine, however, all of my unscheduled time looks like time off, but feels like time I should be devoting to one task or another. That simultaneous push/pull leads to a feeling that I'm never doing what I "should" be doing and can pull me dangerously close to workaholism.

Over the past few semesters, I've finally gotten into a routine where my start time is the same each day -- something I needed, but didn't know I needed until it became my norm. Now, the next step is finding a balance between work and play in the time that remains.

And that begins with giving myself permission to play as well as work -- before I hit the point where play is the only option because I'm too mentally or physically tired or unmotivated to work any more. Last weekend, I spent some time at the beach recalibrating. It's a start.

How about you? Do you thrive on routine? Have you struck a successful balance between work and play, or have you forgotten what play is? If the latter is true, perhaps there's no better time than summer to make sure play time -- and maybe even nap time -- is a part of your schedule.

Even if you have to put it on your to-do list.