One thing that is important to me is to start and end the workday with a proven and familiar routine – lets call it a ritual. There are some advantages to this approach. First, you have a defined starting point. No matter what the day may throw at you, there are some anchors in your structure or environment that you can rely on. For example, I don’t start my work without a (big) filled glass of water on my desk. It might get hectic, but my supply of water is secured until lunch. I make it a habit to empty that glass before lunch, too, but that’s not as important as the ritual of supplying myself with a beverage and only then starting my work.
My guess is that most of you already do this, too. The start of a workday is the natural point in time to install habits or even rituals. But what about the end of your workday? Sure, there is a point in time when you “drop the pen” and rush out the door. But right before this moment, there is a possibility to introduce a beneficial ritual that might only cost minutes, but brings value that furthers your career and even your current work.
My usual ritual is a short daily reflection. That’s not exactly my own idea, I just borrowed it from the Clean Code Developer Initiative. My problem with the CCDI version is the focus on software development alone, which is probably a good start, but too narrow for my work profile.
My adaption is to have three basic questions that I ask myself at the end of each workday and answer in “articulated thoughts”. You may prefer to say it out loud or write your answer down (Obsidian or similar tools might be a suitable tool for that). My questions to myself are:
- How do you feel right now?
- What surprised you today?
- What do you want to remember from today’s work?
Note how these questions don’t deal with details of your current work. If you have specific topics that you want to reflect on, you can always add some more questions for a period. I have found it important not to skip or replace the three basic questions, though.
“How do you feel?” is a complicated question because it leads to your motivation for work. Of course, “tired” or “stressed” is always a valid answer. But what if you legitimately feel “proud” or “fulfilled”? Can you identify what aspect of today’s work made you proud? Can you think of a way to have more of that without neglecting other important duties?
“What surprised you today?” tries to carve out your latest learning experience. It is possible that your day was dull enough to have no surprises, but if there were, you’ve probably expanded your knowledge on a topic you didn’t expect. If the surprise was a negative one, maybe you can think about a way to make it less surprising, more rare or downright impossible in the future. In my case, this lead to some unusual gadgets like the “bad idea commands” list that hangs right besides the admininstation console. The most infamous command on this list is “mdadm –create”, by the way (I meant “mdadm –assemble” and was very surprised by the result).
“What do you want to remember?” is an explicit appeal to write your answer down. You don’t need to tell an elaborate story. Just give your future self some cues, preferably from outside your brain (Obsidian’s market claim of “a second brain” is no coincidence). Make a small note or write your future self an e-mail (this is my typical way of offloading things to future me). But persist this information now or it will be gone.
After this daily reflection, I shut down my computer and put the (probably empty) glass of water into the dishwasher. Then I switch into leisure mode.
Of course, my three questions are inspired from other sources, too. One is the workshop hosting manual for code retreats, which has a great section about the “closing circle”, a group reflection on a probably awesome day.
If you have a similar ritual, let us know about it! Write a blog entry or drop a comment below.
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