Are Your Rituals Serving You? (Manage your context for productivity)

(Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes)

We’re creatures of habit. We love our habits. We must, because we indulge in our habits so often. Indulge isn’t quite the right word… we’re emotionally compelled to act habitually.

Think about it: What do you do every morning when you wake up and get out of bed? Now think about how it would feel to go do something differently. Even a little differently. For example, if you’re in the habit of enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, try a cup of ice water instead. Do everything else you would normally do, exactly the same way. How does that feel? How does even thinking about that feel?

I’d be cranky all day.

Really cranky.

Our rituals are profoundly important to our well-being, which is why we need to ensure these rituals build useful and productive habits instead of useless and destructive habits.

At this very moment in which I’m writing, I’m wrestling with incorporating client work into my daily schedule. It’s tough. I’m used to working on projects straight through until the project is done. The straight-through model has two main problems:

1. I have a lot of irons in the fire, most needing some sort of (ir)regular attention.
2. Projects are never “done,” not really.

So, what to do?

Roll your own rituals

The word “ritual” is emotionally overloaded, with connotations implying a vast range of behavior ranging from the sublime and divine to the base and profane. Here’s how Dictionary.com defines “ritual” used as a noun:

1. an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.
2. a system or collection of religious or other rites.
3. observance of set forms in public worship.
4. a book of rites or ceremonies.
5. a book containing the offices to be used by priests in administering the sacraments and for visitation of the sick, burial of the dead, etc.
6. a prescribed or established rite, ceremony, proceeding, or service: the ritual of the dead.
7. prescribed, established, or ceremonial acts or features collectively, as in religious services.
8. any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.
9. a prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct, as that exemplified by the raising of one’s hat or the shaking of hands in greeting.
10. Psychiatry. a specific act, as hand-washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis.

Our interest is in #8: “any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.”

Change habits with rituals

Rituals free our mind from thinking.

Once we get the ritual figured out, it helps us context switch very easily. Context switching is really what the “multi-tasking” people are talking about. Multi-tasking is easy. The more practice you get, the more multitasking you will be able to do. Managing multiple contexts is difficult. Switching context is always much more difficult. Having a good ritual helps set the context.

By the way, none of what I’m writing about is new. The problems we face are timeless, even though we feel our burdens are unique. Here’s one way to manage context, from the “Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, BART” (vol 1, p. 249, 1881):

I got into [George] Cuvier’s sanctum sanctorum yesterday, and it is truly characteristic of the man. In every part it displays that extraordinary power of methodizing which is the grand secret of the prodigious feats which he performs annually without appearing to give himself the least trouble. But before I introduce you to this study,…

Here’s a link to Lyell’s account excerpted from the New York Times, January 22, 1882. (Grab the PDF file)

Ok, so you didn’t read it, I’m cool with that. Here’s the upshot: Cuvier’s productivity was enhanced by his ability to manage his context. Just have a different room for every project. It’s easy when you live in a castle!

Client rituals

When I need to get started with client work, several things need to happen.

1. All the material for that client needs to be brought front and center. This is where MS Windows is infuriating: only one desktop. Unix-based systems have had extended desktop capability since at least vtwm, which is pushing 20 years old. I’m digressing again… I’ll rant about this in a future article.
2. Billing and metadata infrastructure need to be opened. I use clicktime.com for time billing, Freshbooks for invoicing, a personal wiki (archived into a subversion repository) for documenting tasks, Basecamp when necessary or appropriate, and Trac for general tasking. My Trac and Subversion hosting is through wush.net. Wush doesn’t have an affiliate program, I wish they did. Customer service at Wush is so good, I won’t change to use anyone else (Hat tip: Michael Ching).
3. Tasking: Figuring out what to do can be tough. My current technique is using a technical diary along with task management web applications.

   Digression…

   After once being informed that my technical notebook was properly the property of the formerly-very-large-but-mismanaged-into-oblivion (it shines no more *cough*) technical company I worked for in the early oughts, I’ve been much more circumspect about even admitting I keep a technical notebook. (Now I feel I’m oversharing)

   In any case, I keep a running list of tasks so that I can put something down for a month, then pick right up where I left off.

To benefit myself as well as Website In A Weekend readers, here’s the ritual I’m developing – right now – for handling client work:

1. Create or open the client’s dedicated folder on my computer.
2. Log in to Clicktime.com and set the client’s project active.
3. Open the technical diary, wiki, find relevant paper notebooks, pens, pencils, etc.
4. Examine the task list and triage according to priority.
5. Set a timer and get to work.

I’ll develop each list item (and between each list item) in a future article, but the specific task for each item isn’t really the point.

The point is developing the checklist, then turning off your brain and stepping through the list without thinking. Once you have everything in your checklist complete, you will find it much easier to be productive.

Think of that expression “shifting gears.” This is what shifting gears looks like.

“Yeah yeah yeah, Dave, that’s all well and good, but does it work?”

Yes.

It works if you work it. You have to be willing to start the process and follow it through to the end. It helps to be well-rested.

Your rituals

Everyone has rituals and habits.

What are your most useful rituals for success?

Do you think sharing these stories about rituals and habits could be considered “oversharing” with respect to future clients or employers? Why or why not?

What new ritual would you like to practice for building a productive habit?

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Meta alert! Any rhetoric weenies notice that parallel sentence in the introduction?