I never thought I’d miss performing from the office. Even before the pandemic, I preferred performing from home. I loved avoiding the stinky, crowded subway. I loved the pliability to figure in my pj’s. I loved having my very own space where I wouldn’t be interrupted by people or distracted by the office around me.
Until it quite didn’t. The longer I worked from home thanks to the pandemic, the more I felt my work slipping. There’s no denying that tons of it's to try to to with the various psychological state stressors of the pandemic, but also, there have been some hidden struggles to WFH life that I didn’t account for. Turns out, the small habits and rituals of office life that i used to be happy to go away behind—like commuting on the subway or walking to a restaurant for a coffee break—not only helped me perform better at work, but also enabled me to practice better self-care and unwind. That’s because, whether i noticed it or not, they were crucial things called transition rituals.
There’s an honest chance you’ve heard the recommendation that setting a routine while performing from home can assist you get more done (and feel better doing it). And it can! But if you set a routine and are still feeling unbalanced and unproductive, I’m willing to bet that you simply , like me, didn’t account for the loss of transition rituals. once we don’t have transition rituals built into our days (a big problem with WFH life), our days can get tons tougher . So we've to make them. Let’s talk.
Okay, I’m intrigued. What are transition rituals, exactly?
Let me copy . We spend our days transitioning between individual tasks and projects, and that we also transition between larger blocks of your time , like from our workday to non-public time. But what we don’t often realize is that we don’t always just bounce aimlessly from one thing to a different . Instead, we sometimes mark transitions with little “rituals” that signal to our brain it’s time to modify gears.
You probably have plenty of habits that function as transition rituals without even brooding about it: you “transition” from home to figure by driving, you “transition” between projects by taking a stretch break or scrolling through social media, you “transition” from parent mode to relax mode with a glass of wine or a soothing candle after your kids attend bed.
For some, these rituals aren’t super essential—some people can dive into work, take breaks, and hop between tasks quite naturally (jealous!). for several folks , though, transitioning can throw us off. Left to our own devices, we will run the danger of procrastinating, avoiding breaks, getting distracted, losing concentration, or any number of habits that make the day difficult. That’s where transition rituals are available .
For one, take how we will enjoy a solid morning routine and nighttime routine—they transition us in and out of the workday. “When you finish work for the day, it’s hard to travel straight from 60 to 0 miles per hour, so instead, you'll take a step-down approach,” psychotherapist Ryan Howes, Ph.D., tells SELF. therein way, you would possibly feel better signaling the top of your workday by taking a walk rather than , say, just closing your work email and opening Twitter. an equivalent goes for having a morning routine before starting work so you don’t need to go 0 to 60 then, either.
Similarly, many people do better once they don’t rush from one task to a different or wander mindlessly between them. “Concentration and focus are renewable resources, but they have to be recharged,” psychotherapist and coauthor of A Radical Guide for ladies With ADHD Michelle Frank, Psy.D., tells SELF. “It’s really important to offer your brain time to reset and refocus throughout the day.”
So how do I establish transition rituals?
There are tons of transition rituals you'll build into your day, and initially glance they’re pretty straightforward. Transitional rituals are often activities like: going for a walk, taking your dog out, calling a lover for a fast chat, knocking out a chore, brewing a mug of coffee or tea, reading, taking note of music, doing a meditation, exercising, taking a shower, eating a meal—the list goes on.
If this looks like tons of fuss just to inform you to require a walk or meditate, you’re not wrong. The key's to be intentional about when and the way you are doing this stuff . If it were as simple as taking breaks or completing a selected routine, we wouldn’t have a problem within the first place. Putting purpose and thought behind how we move from one thing to another—whether that’s starting, stopping, or switching between tasks—can put us within the right headspace to remain on target .
With that in mind, here are a couple of tips for building transition rituals:
1. Know when and why you run into trouble.
Everyone has different challenges they will problem-solve with transition rituals. Maybe you've got a tough time disengaging from work on the top of the day and thus can’t relax. Maybe once you attempt to take a brief break, time gets faraway from you because you get sucked into a social media vortex. Maybe you never get any work done until noon because you usually plop down ahead of your computer before you really feel awake. Once you recognize the pain points of your day, you'll build from there.
Whatever your issue is, it’s about asking how you'll set yourself up to succeed. For me, it’s not as simple as deciding, “Okay, I’m getting to take an opportunity at 3 p.m. to remain productive.” It’s, “How am i able to remind myself to require an opportunity between projects, and the way am i able to confirm it doesn’t derail the remainder of my workday?” From there, I found my transition rituals: either a midday shower or 15-minute ride on my stationary bike, prompted by an alarm on my phone. What’s your version of that?
2. When unsure , re-create the familiar.
Like I said, an enormous problem for several has been losing transition rituals that were built into our day. albeit I didn’t know it at the time, riding the subway to figure prepared me to urge shit done and commuting home got me within the space to rest. Similarly, grabbing coffee with a coworker during the day gave me a chance to urge within the headspace to modify between, say, writing a story and preparing for an interview.
These are transition rituals I can re-create with some effort. Maybe I can’t mount the subway, but I can remember that I’m wont to having about 45 minutes of reading and taking note of music before and after work, so that’s what I aim for a few days (other days I knock out some chores while feeling grateful I even have a start without my commute). Choose something that resembles the transition time that has worked for you before.
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3. Plan for them until they become habits.
As with building any habit, you sometimes need to fake it until it comes naturally to you, says Howes. But a bit like breaking for coffee within the office together with your coworker or chatting round the device felt habit , transition rituals can start to feel automatic too. For that to happen, you've got to be really intentional within the beginning.
That said, there are tons of various ways to travel that . For some, intentionality seems like scheduling your transition rituals as a part of your routine and sticking thereto , except for others which may be stifling. I go for a versatile in-between approach. I vaguely schedule my day and set alarms for my routines—but if I’m within the middle of a project and it’s not an excellent time, I hit snooze until I’m ready. Otherwise, I’d just keep it up working without an opportunity .
For others, it makes more sense to make a decision on certain cues as triggers for rituals. for instance , getting to do a particular ritual whenever you finish a task on your to-do list or after every team Zoom call. Your body may additionally provide natural cues, and if you’re in tune with it, you'll plan around it—like deciding you’ll take a walk once you feel brain fog creeping in or take a 10-minute break for a glass of water and a guided meditation once you feel thirsty.
The point is setting rules for yourself, in whatever way is sensible for you. just about anything is best than vaguely deciding you would like to implement some transition rituals then winging it.
4. Set your boundaries and find ways to enforce them.
When it involves actually doing the rituals rather than just planning for them, you would possibly got to go the additional mile to form sure they’re effective. very similar to with setting goals, specificity can help tons with follow-through. for instance , rather than saying you’re getting to read after work before tackling dishes, tell yourself you’re getting to read for 20 minutes or read one chapter. Otherwise, whoops, suddenly it’s been an hour and you’re still reading to procrastinate on all of your nightly responsibilities (true story).
Alarms, timers, and self-control extensions also can keep you on target . for instance , if your transition ritual for alleviating into your workday involves reading the news and scrolling through Twitter but you usually roll in the hay way longer than you mean to, install an app like SelfControl so you can’t access Twitter after 10 a.m. Similarly, many find the Pomodoro technique useful.
5. Be kind to yourself and experiment.
No transition ritual—or way of handling productivity struggles associated with psychological state , for that matter—is one-size-fits-all. you'll need to experiment to seek out out the way to make it work for you, and even once you find one that helps, it won’t work perfectly or forever.
But quite that, don’t put an undue amount of pressure on yourself to unravel all of your struggles immediately . Sure, learning about transition rituals and why they’re important was super helpful on behalf of me . But it also didn’t solve all my problems. Getting shit done, staying productive, and managing a healthy work-life balance are still hard, especially during an epidemic . It’s important to remind yourself that transition rituals are just tools to stay in your back pocket. Your most vital tools immediately might just be lowering your expectations and practicing an entire lot of self-compassion.
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