Returning to work after a long vacation = not much fun. I thought I liked my job. And maybe I did. Returning to it is a different story. I think that the months of hard work leading up to the vacation wore me out. I was tired of the intense pace of work and never being able to be on top of things. And then after a slow pace over the break, I am not willing to get back into intense-mode.
\nI also notice that my desire for engagement bounces back and forth. Before the break I sometimes had 4 meetings (or more!) per day. This was too many, but it did keep me engaged and moving forward. Now I have hardly any meetings in the first few days of semester. It’s a welcome relief and open space to breathe and tackle some of the clean-up, read, big-thinking projects. However, after 2 days with hardly any meetings I’m struggling to keep myself motivated. Maybe a couple of meetings here and there help?<\/p>\n
Of course, today was also challenging because I had a big unpleasant hard task to tackle. I really didn’t know how to do it, so I kept avoiding it. And avoiding it, and avoiding it, and procrastinating like the master I can be. The end result, typically, was stress (stress produces stress!) and bad feelings about my work discipline. Finally, I managed to draft something to look at later and that was enough to break the cycle. The rest of the afternoon went much better.<\/p>\n
Thinking about my work patterns, my desire for a good pace at work, to get things done but also enjoy myself, and to make time during the day (during my non-work periods) to take care of personal responsibilities, here’s what I’d like to do.<\/p>\n
1. Take lunch every day for 1 hour, 12 – 1. I’ve been ignoring the clock with the result that I never know how long the break is.<\/p>\n
2. Take water breaks – 2 a day would be good – and go refill my water bottle. The nearest fountain is in another building (yes, the fun of my eco-friendly cutting edge building!) so it means down and then up 3 flights. A good excuse to get some exercise AND up my water intake.<\/p>\n
3. Get out of my chair every 30 minutes and STRETCH. I actually have a reminder on my calendar that pops up every 30 minutes to remind me to move. Last semester I was so busy I ignored it. This semester, that’s going to change!<\/p>\n
4. Start the work day with work. I want to schedule my first activity in the morning to be substantive work on something big. Not email. Once I get going wtih email it’s all over. If I start with 30 minutes of something requiring deep thought, the rest of the day will follow suit.<\/p>\n
5. Get out and see people. If I don’t have meetings, then other human interaction is important. Make coffee dates with friends, pop in and say hello, arrange to go for a walk, eat lunch in the lunch room instead of my office.<\/p>\n
6. Try and fit in 15 minutes for writing over lunch. First eat lunch; then write; then relax.<\/p>\n
That should be enough to improve my quality of life at work and my productivity. And reduce stress, yes. And increase the peace!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Returning to work after a long vacation = not much fun. I thought I liked my job. And maybe I did. Returning to it is a different story. I think that the months of hard work leading up to the vacation wore me out. I was tired of the intense pace of work and never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[241],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self","tag-work"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}