Who are you before you're Work You™?
Who are you before you're Work You™?
Find your calm before the coffee.
Working from home has a fun way of blending your personal life and work life together.
Even if you’re incredibly disciplined, having work and life share a space can be stressful (whether it is leading to overworking or underworking).
Since I started working remotely full time, I found that establishing rituals to enforce some structure helped me get ready to work in the same space I live my life in.
The first one I adopted, and one I’m sure you’re familiar with, is coffee. Coffee was my transition between waking up and becoming a Work Human™. I like it more than most (I used to go to sleep thinking about my coffee time in the morning: wake up, walk over to the coffee machine still half-asleep, choose the brew of the day, foam the milk until it’s just right, and then pour the liquid gold into my favourite mug).
Enjoying a warm coffee while scrolling through Reddit and catching up on the news felt almost like a hug - much needed before diving into my to-do list.
Yet, despite its warmth, this ritual wasn’t the productivity booster I had convinced myself it was. Instead of clearly stepping into my workday, I was relying on the boost of caffeine to jolt me into it (a common tactic I’m sure my fellow neurodiverse readers recognise! We talked about more this in Beyond limits: How neurodiversity can better your workplace.)
As it turns out, a lot of us do this. Coffee is just one kind of blurry transition ritual from our “self” self to our work selves. There’s many of them, and they can harm our work-life balance, our focus, and our ability to show up at work well.
It all starts with how you start your morning. Or, rather, how you delay starting the work part of it.
Our morning rituals, whatever they be, give us the energy we need to start our day.
In a time where less and less of us are commuting, that means less time in traffic, in metro cars, etc., and more time in front of our laptops.
But by pressing the boost button too early, and not giving ourselves a proper transition into work, we aren’t really waking up.
Instead, we’re robbing ourselves of time with ourselves. You know how people talk about the power of visualisation? It works. But you have to give yourself time to think about your day - before your day gets started.
The way to have a better relationship with work from the start of the day is to enforce some space before you open your laptop.
To do so:
Figure out what your “work transition” ritual is. Then, delay it slightly by adding a “pre” ritual.
If coffee is what makes your morning worth having, great. But start perhaps with a glass of water. Keep it next to your coffee machine so you have to drink it first.
As far back as Hippocrates, it’s been well known that having more sun is good for you (although the idea to get sunlight before coffee is now back in vogue, thanks to biohacking and longevity scientists!) So before you open your laptop, take a walk around the block.
If you start your day with a lot of calls, pre-empt them with your own meeting of the muscles and do 10 minutes of stretches (pretend you’re stretching your patience muscle, if you’re not looking forward to them).
There’s a certain Stanford professor that I won’t name (because he’s also been accused of manipulating several women) who has made the findings of other researchers about how to have a better morning much more mainstream and popular. Some of them are getting sunlight first thing, hydrating, a bit of exercise, and holding off on caffeine. I’ve read more about this and how changing your routine can get your body and mind to work at their best. (This might or might not have to do with the fact that I'm fast approaching my 30s 😮💨) . I replaced my coffee ritual with a glass of water and a short walk outside, followed by 10 minutes of stretches.
This new routine pushed my other rituals a bit later, which allowed my body to wake up naturally and sync my first coffee of the day with my body’s natural cortisol dip. The first days weren't easy, I'm not going to lie. I woke up feeling like I could smell the fresh coffee, but I also knew that habits need some adaptation time, so I pushed myself and gave my body two weeks to adapt and experiment with this new routine before making any conclusions. After the first week, the morning pre-caffeine fog started to lift, and by the second week, I was waking up excited to catch some fresh air outside and enjoy the empty streets and chill weather before it became too hot to be outside.
What I didn’t expect was the impact this change had on the rest of my day. I was feeling more clear-headed and energised in the mornings, and it felt like I was planning my days better due to my newfound morning clarity.
I also didn’t feel as tired during midday, and I was enjoying my coffee time way more. Since I moved it to two hours after my workday began, it allowed me to take a break after having accomplished some small wins and having my priorities for the day already established. I could enjoy that half-hour without the anxiety of knowing that I had to get on my chair and start planning my workday because I had already done that hours ago.
Remember, it typically takes about 21 days to form a new habit, so you are going to need some patience here. But I can promise that if you start listening to your own body and are willing to give yourself a chance to adjust, you're likely to be surprised by the results. You might even find yourself building even better rituals than the ones you currently swear by.
Wishing you happy mornings ahead,
xAndrea