I’m going to share with you, very quickly, five excellent habits for pastors or anybody working from home. In fact, they work even if you’re not working from home. These really do help you get the most out of your day and help your productivity, your energy level and everything else. We’ll walk through in the order in which they will happen.
Step number one is, as soon as you get up, drink 20 ounces or more of water. Just get down that water. Get hydrated. At first, it’s really tough. I have a mug I found that holds exactly 20 ounces and when I first started doing this I could barely get it down. Now I down that then I pour a little bit more in and add another couple of swallows to get 25 to 28 ounces right out of the gate. That just gives you a great shot of hydration and gets your body functioning the way it ought to function.
(One bonus habit, that I didn’t mention in the podcast but which is very helpful: Take a short walk outside first thing. We have two little loops we do, one is 10 minutes and one is 20 minutes. We pick one depending on what time it is and what else is going on. But this, in combination with the hydration, sets your day off an a beautiful trajectory.)
Next, when you have your nice warm wake-up shower, right at the very end of it crank it down and have a cold shower for the last 30 seconds. Now it doesn’t have to be bitterly ice cold. I can’t quite handle that, but I do turn it down quite a bit. I’ve seen from the settings in the shower that my wife turns it all the way down which, just the look of that, scares me! But I turn it down, just not quite all the way. It’s cold and not comfortable. What’s interesting is if you do that for 30 seconds, any fog in the bathroom gets cleaned up and as soon as you turn it off, you feel great. You’re awake, your body feels good and you close up the pores so you don’t keep sweating and it really gets you going on through the day.
Another thing that is really excellent all the time, but it’s been great while working from home because it keeps you from maybe eating more than you should, and that is having a smoothie for breakfast. There’s all kinds of recipes you can find online. My wife makes ours the night before and it’s waiting for me in the fridge when I get up in the morning. It’s packed with nutrition and all of that good stuff that I might not have if I just had bacon and eggs and toast with peanut butter and jam. So I have the smoothie and my day gets off to a good start nutritionally.
Then through the day, there’s a lot of other little productivity things I could talk to you about, but the one big one is we have decided, during times of crisis in particular, don’t look at the news before 5 p.m. Not at a break in the morning. Not at lunch. Nothing before 5pm. I’ll can’t believe how it keeps your head clear and thinking more positively. It’s the same news later in the day as is earlier in the day, so you don’t miss anything.
The final little habit that we’ve been forming, and it’s been good but maybe the hardest one for me, is no snacking after dinner. No popcorn, no nachos, no peanuts, no chocolate bars, no appies after dinner except on Fridays when I get to make whatever I want. We allow some latitude on Fridays but only on that day. Otherwise we’d be eating a lot more snacks. For me personally, I know just not snacking after dinner is the only thing pretty much I need to do to maintain a healthy weight. If I don’t snack after dinner, I will at least hold the weight I have, if not drop it down a bit.
So there you have it. Five excellent habits for pastors or anybody else working from home, or really anybody anytime. These habits can change your life.
Hope you have an outstanding day whatever you’re up to. God bless. Press on.
