I’ve had a pretty productive morning where I did a webinar and related work, and then dealt with some emails. Into the afternoon I continued with this sense of productivity until about mid afternoon when I felt myself start to drag. I knew from experience I was at that stage where I was going to stare at the screen or, since I’m working from my home office today, maybe go sit on the couch, doze off or wallow and ultimately not get a whole lot done. Even though I mindfully had a light lunch, I was still starting to drag mid afternoon.
I knew of one thing to break that pattern so I could squeak out another segment of productivity, which was a state change. I got up, packed up my laptop, headed down to the coffee shop, bought a coffee and a cookie, and I had a clear project in mind. I wasn’t just going to a different location, but totally changed gears completely and worked on a project that’s kind of been hanging there. I’m doing a board training in a couple of weeks and I have to adapt somebody else’s training for this from our denominational office.
So I went down to the coffee shop, put my head down for about an hour and a half and just worked over, personalized the content and got in another great segment of productivity. Then came home and now it’s almost dinnertime. I basically took what would have been a pretty good day and made it an extremely productive day from beginning to end.
The principal or the tactic here is if you’re starting to drag, something’s got to change; change of location or change of project. I chose to do both today and I think the fact that I did both really helped a lot. It’s really hard to break out of a declining energy and seizing up mind without changing your location. I find that changing location helps a bit.
That’s why when I work from my home office, if I’m going to listen to a podcast or do some training or some education stuff, I usually go outside my office to the living room, or in the summer I’ll go out on the back deck. Then when I come back in and there’s a change of location, I can get back to more of the work on the computer screen.
So just a quick tip on changing your location or changing your project. Try having some of those 30 or 90 minute projects or segments of projects that you can just take and go and do somewhere else to help focus in on and squeeze out another piece of of good productivity in your day.
Hope you’re having an outstanding day. Thanks for listening. God bless and press on.
