Make a Habit of Winning the Day

I started my last blog talking about home and work life blurring and how to find time to focus on your mental and physical wellbeing - to help you thrive not just survive.

I hope you’ve been able to create some new positive habits and incorporate some super stress busters into your daily routine so you can face your workday with increased energy, confidence and vitality.

Another key component to this is being as proactive as possible and working to a schedule that works best for you, matching your creativity to your energy levels.

I saw lots of smart people use their out-of-office to mention they were working to different hours, perhaps juggling childcare, so not to expect an immediate reply. An eight-hour working day at home can be sliced and diced to fit within sixteen hours. Email can be looked at twice a day, once first thing and again at the end of the day – taking control of it and not just reacting to it. The morning can be used for concentrated work and then ½ hour Zoom calls in the afternoon. Using your calendar to block out time in advance so you can exercise, take a break and think.

Mason Currey, in his book Daily Rituals looked at how 161 creative figures, use a daily routine to remove obstacles and unnecessary thinking time so they can accomplish the work they love to do. According to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, founder of Strategy and Rest, ‘routines synchronise work to peak performance times, but also let the subconscious continue working on unsolved problems during rest periods — a strategic use of downtime that generates more “a-ha” moments’.

Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Twitter and Square, has a highly structured and disciplined daily routine. He wakes early, meditates for an hour, has a cold shower, walks to the office in one hour 15 minutes, listening to a book, podcast or just thinking. He wins the day before it starts. The workday is then themed – Monday’s for management, Tuesday is product development, Wednesday is marketing, Thursday is partnerships and Friday is company and culture.

Salesforce, the largest employer in the San Francisco Bay area, recently launched a report on the end of the 9 to 5.  For them, most employees will flex. This means they’ll be in the office one to three days per week for team collaboration, customer meetings and presentations. Worth re-reading what the office is good for.

With a return to the office now in sight, we’ll need to adapt and change again and embrace this as a new challenge. The thought though of returning exactly to old ways I’m sure is horrifying - clocking in, default hour-long meetings, slow decision making, absenteeism, presenteeism, writing and reading long papers, sitting at the desk replying to emails.  Enough!

I’m sure though if you’re reading this you’re not thinking about going backwards – instead looking for continuous improvement in everything you do. It has been inspiring to hear the lockdown positives about organisations moving quickly to launch new products; pivot (will we still use that word?) as well as focus intently on wellbeing, team collaboration and motivation.

A new office environment is an exciting prospect and it will be great to interact with friends and colleagues, look them in the eye, smile and even turn up 5 minutes late for a meeting! We mustn’t though lose any of the positives we’ve gained from the lockdown, especially elements of our routines that enable us to perform at our best.

And the big question, will it still be okay to wear the same outfit for a week?