I need to have a bird’s eye view of my week, so long ago I developed a habit of sitting down on Sunday nights to look at my schedule. It helps me think ahead about my priorities and how to pace my time and energy.
The paragraph I wrote above is true, and I also made the most interesting observation earlier this week - I spin in circles on Monday mornings. Little Miss Inner Critic (who believes she is disguising herself as my “self-coach”) jumped up on her soapbox, grabbed her megaphone, and started in with quite the narrative. I let her have her say, and then decided to get curious about what was going on.
I need to pop in and out of five email accounts to assess the big picture and to know what priorities might need to be shifted. I also glance over my to-do list for the day. Sometimes there’s a little organization that needs to take place on my desk. When I realized Monday morning what was happening, I stood up from my desk to take a pause (and change a light bulb, oops).
During that pause while I was trying to stay curious, I made a decision that felt incredibly freeing. I’m going to plan to gently spin a little bit on Monday mornings if I feel like I need to. I will get to my desk 15 minutes earlier to allow time to ease into not just the day, but also my week. I can’t sit down and expect my brain to go from weekend mode to full work mode in 60 seconds. It needs time to step into the day, to shift gears, and to find the focus that work requires.
I have so much to lose from fighting a process that I seem to need. I have so much to gain by building in some spaciousness to let my brain acclimate and warm up for the work week ahead. I’m going to consider it an experiment and see how it goes. In an effort to be more compassionate with my approach to self-discipline, this felt like the most kind thing I could offer myself right now.
I’m curious as you’re reading this if any insights might be coming up for you.
Is there a process you notice you are fighting?
What might it look like if you built in some extra time to allow that process to happen and gave your brain a little space and flexibility to work through it?