Shaking Up the Work Day - Part 2
We were talking about how sometimes we need to shake up our work day. Last time, since we're in the Easter Season, we left off with the greatest shaking up the world has ever experienced: the Passion, Death, and - most especially - the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. With that connection to our ongoing Easter Season, let's look at shaking up our work day, especially in response to being in a rut.
If you've worked for any length of time at the same job, you may have slipped into a rut from time to time. I have. I even know one fellow who sounds like he's been in a rut at work for years. He doesn't seem to mind it. He shows up at his desk, mostly sits around performing tasks he can do in his sleep, goes home at the end of the day. I learned that he's a member of a union that negotiated a contract that forces his company to keep his department fully staffed even though there's not enough work to go around. So he is, in a sense, paid to sleepwalk through the day. I don't know about you, but that would drive me crazy.
My father was a blue collar worker. One of his jobs required him to sit at his bench and assemble sophisticated cameras. (One of the cameras he built was used during NASA's space program to land on and explore the moon.) He seemed to like that sort of patient, detailed work. For example, one of is hobbies was fixing watches, which required similar skills, patience, attention to details, working with small parts, making things fit together and function as intended. In any case, he couldn't and wouldn't tolerate being at work and sitting idle. I remember him complaining on occasion about his union enforcing a certain degree of idleness on him because he had made his quotas and they didn't want him to produce any more work for a spell. They expected him to just sit on his hands at his bench. Whenever that happened he'd punch out and come home. (They used "punch clocks" in those days where workers would insert a card in a "punch clock" at the beginning and end of the work day to mark their hours.) Of course, he wouldn't be paid once he punched out; and it's not like we couldn't use the money. But he hated that artificially imposed idleness so much, he didn't care I suppose.
That's one way to stay or get out of a rut: stay busy, or get busy.
I may have inherited that gene. While I rarely face the problem of idleness, I do get in a rut from time to time. Since my work tends to process-driven ruts burrow in when I'm essentially repeating a process over and over, same day, same time each week. At such points, I think of ways to shake up the day, or my "normal" routine. The idea of doing so is to sort of shake myself out of that rut by changing my routine. I might move things around, or change the length of time I put into particular parts of my job. For example, I attacked a recent rut by lengthening the time I spend on certain functions each day. Lengthening those shorter bursts of activity helped me concentrate on and move projects along more efficiently and comprehensively. I found it more engaging to take a bit more time to dive deep into the work and stay there for a while. It seems my former pattern of getting things done quickly, expeditiously had led to a kind of superficiality that made the work rote. Things did get done with that approach. And sometimes, especially if you run a small business, there's not much margin for down time. You just need to get things done. On the other hand, quickness can sometimes sacrifice quality. And, if nothing else, we try to produce quality work at all times.
This recent awareness of the pitfalls of pure efficiency vis a vis time spent on a project spurred the change in my schedule and work habits. It also reminded me of something I've read from a number of sources in my spiritual reading: We shouldn't plow through our prayers. The example given in a recent piece was the rosary. It can be a challenge to say the rosary each day, especially when your work's packed tight. For example, I've found myself at times pinned to my laptop screen for hours on end with little break time. Whereas in the past I could say my rosary during a lunch break, or a mid-day walk in the sun, when the day gets away from me and affords little respite, saying the rosary becomes especially challenging At first, my solution was to say my rosary before the day begins. It's not a bad idea; except for those times when I rush through it. If it gets to the point where you mindlessly repeat prayers with little attention to what you're saying, maybe it's better to slow things down, even at the expense of not finishing all five decades. (This is easier to say than do for me, but it does make a lot of sense, doesn't it?)
We began today's thoughts with a connection to the Easter Season, and finished up with a connection to our daily prayers. On between, we gave some examples of being in a rut at work, and made some suggestions about how to deal with that. It's likely there are as many ways to lift ourselves out of a rut as there are ruts. May own experience has been that once you recognize your plight, simply apply different measures until you're re-focused and re-energized. My new pattern of taking more time to engage on this or that task, or project may create yet a new rut one of these days. At that point, maybe I'll go back to shorter bursts of activity. Who knows? There's no one solution to getting out of a rut, and, I suspect, no one solution that will last forever.
Next time we'll expand on all this. We'll see how the life of Christ, from birth to Resurrection, can and should be the gold standard of our daily activity, even - or perhaps especially - in the work place. Until then, don't forget it's still the Easter Season. Let's all continue to keep the Resurrection front and center as best we can. With that in mind,
If you've worked for any length of time at the same job, you may have slipped into a rut from time to time. I have. I even know one fellow who sounds like he's been in a rut at work for years. He doesn't seem to mind it. He shows up at his desk, mostly sits around performing tasks he can do in his sleep, goes home at the end of the day. I learned that he's a member of a union that negotiated a contract that forces his company to keep his department fully staffed even though there's not enough work to go around. So he is, in a sense, paid to sleepwalk through the day. I don't know about you, but that would drive me crazy.
My father was a blue collar worker. One of his jobs required him to sit at his bench and assemble sophisticated cameras. (One of the cameras he built was used during NASA's space program to land on and explore the moon.) He seemed to like that sort of patient, detailed work. For example, one of is hobbies was fixing watches, which required similar skills, patience, attention to details, working with small parts, making things fit together and function as intended. In any case, he couldn't and wouldn't tolerate being at work and sitting idle. I remember him complaining on occasion about his union enforcing a certain degree of idleness on him because he had made his quotas and they didn't want him to produce any more work for a spell. They expected him to just sit on his hands at his bench. Whenever that happened he'd punch out and come home. (They used "punch clocks" in those days where workers would insert a card in a "punch clock" at the beginning and end of the work day to mark their hours.) Of course, he wouldn't be paid once he punched out; and it's not like we couldn't use the money. But he hated that artificially imposed idleness so much, he didn't care I suppose.
That's one way to stay or get out of a rut: stay busy, or get busy.
I may have inherited that gene. While I rarely face the problem of idleness, I do get in a rut from time to time. Since my work tends to process-driven ruts burrow in when I'm essentially repeating a process over and over, same day, same time each week. At such points, I think of ways to shake up the day, or my "normal" routine. The idea of doing so is to sort of shake myself out of that rut by changing my routine. I might move things around, or change the length of time I put into particular parts of my job. For example, I attacked a recent rut by lengthening the time I spend on certain functions each day. Lengthening those shorter bursts of activity helped me concentrate on and move projects along more efficiently and comprehensively. I found it more engaging to take a bit more time to dive deep into the work and stay there for a while. It seems my former pattern of getting things done quickly, expeditiously had led to a kind of superficiality that made the work rote. Things did get done with that approach. And sometimes, especially if you run a small business, there's not much margin for down time. You just need to get things done. On the other hand, quickness can sometimes sacrifice quality. And, if nothing else, we try to produce quality work at all times.
This recent awareness of the pitfalls of pure efficiency vis a vis time spent on a project spurred the change in my schedule and work habits. It also reminded me of something I've read from a number of sources in my spiritual reading: We shouldn't plow through our prayers. The example given in a recent piece was the rosary. It can be a challenge to say the rosary each day, especially when your work's packed tight. For example, I've found myself at times pinned to my laptop screen for hours on end with little break time. Whereas in the past I could say my rosary during a lunch break, or a mid-day walk in the sun, when the day gets away from me and affords little respite, saying the rosary becomes especially challenging At first, my solution was to say my rosary before the day begins. It's not a bad idea; except for those times when I rush through it. If it gets to the point where you mindlessly repeat prayers with little attention to what you're saying, maybe it's better to slow things down, even at the expense of not finishing all five decades. (This is easier to say than do for me, but it does make a lot of sense, doesn't it?)
We began today's thoughts with a connection to the Easter Season, and finished up with a connection to our daily prayers. On between, we gave some examples of being in a rut at work, and made some suggestions about how to deal with that. It's likely there are as many ways to lift ourselves out of a rut as there are ruts. May own experience has been that once you recognize your plight, simply apply different measures until you're re-focused and re-energized. My new pattern of taking more time to engage on this or that task, or project may create yet a new rut one of these days. At that point, maybe I'll go back to shorter bursts of activity. Who knows? There's no one solution to getting out of a rut, and, I suspect, no one solution that will last forever.
Next time we'll expand on all this. We'll see how the life of Christ, from birth to Resurrection, can and should be the gold standard of our daily activity, even - or perhaps especially - in the work place. Until then, don't forget it's still the Easter Season. Let's all continue to keep the Resurrection front and center as best we can. With that in mind,
Happy Easter!
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