As I come to the end of what has been a historic year as a teacher I find myself reflecting about a few things. In last week’s post I included a few questions/topics I have been thinking about while actually addressing a few of the ideas from that list. In this post I would like to explore another idea from that list…lessons I am taking from this unique experience of “teaching” from home. Specifically I want to address how I am merging two very interesting ideas that have held my attention recently; CGP Grey’s thinking about stations and Cal Newport’s thinking about ritualizing.

CGP Grey’s video seeks to help the viewer figure out how best to manage her day during quarantine/lockdown. He outlines the importance of having 4 stations, in an attempt to compartmentalize as well as optimize what gets done in those spaces. The video is amazing and I strongly encourage you to watch it. It will certainly give you, if you care, a lot to think about when looking at your current set up. What follows is my own interpretation of what Grey argues for. 

Station 1

Exercise

During the quarantine/lockdown my exercise has consisted of running 5/times per week, Monday through Friday, in the morning right after I get up. At a micro-level, it is my opinion that I can call this a routine that supports, on a macro-level, the grand ritual of how I make it through any given day. My exercise station is our treadmill, located in my wife’s office…which also serves as…you guessed it…her work space. I run early in the morning because I do not want to interrupt the deep work she engages in so we’ve worked out a time that I can be in there and not be a complete distraction to her. Over the summer…when the weather permits…I will move my running outside. Before I run I drink a 10 ounce glass of water, do 5 push ups, put on my headphones and start a podcast. These are what I will call micro-rituals within the routine that address Newport’s thinking about how I will run and how I will support my run. I have also incorporated walks with my wife…either in the afternoon, shortly after lunch or after we’ve both finished working for the day…as a part of my shutdown ritual which I will address later in this post. This exercise is good for both the body and the mind and has…in my opinion…kept me in the right frame of mind throughout this unique moment in time. 

Station 2

Sleep

Those of you that know me know that I am very serious about my sleep. This goes all the way back to my years spent working on my PhD. I learned early in that process that if I was going to get through that experience I was going to have to get the right amount of sleep. So, I decided that my routine, at least Monday through Friday, would be to go to bed between 8:30pm and 9:00pm to get the appropriate amount, for me, hours of sleep. Things have not changed since my PhD days. Currently, this routine is comprised of micro-rituals that include writing, taking my medications/vitamins, drinking 4 ounces of 100% tart cherry juice, taking a hot shower, followed by 10 minutes of mindfulness. Our bedroom is optimized for sleep…including a white noise machine that we play ocean waves on…very chill! Like my exercise routine, the micro-rituals I have in place for sleep are directed at the “how” and “support” which again feed back into supporting the grand ritual of making it through the day.

Station 3

Recreation/couch and/other

We have several spaces we utilize for “this” and feel very fortunate to have each of them as an option! We have a screened in patio that we use to sit and hangout. Micro-rituals include bringing out a bluetooth speaker to listen to music, just talking about our day and things that are on our mind, and enjoying an adult beverage now and then while engaged in a combination of the aforementioned micro-rituals. This space has been deemed our favorite “room” in the house. We get a great breeze while sitting in this space…it’s a great place to sit and relax. We have a fire pit that we utilize much in the same way, including, when weather permits, the micro-ritual of starting a fire and relaxing. We have a beautiful garden and landscaping that we get to view while sitting out there…making it even more Zen than the patio. In our house, on the first floor, we have a very nice area that we utilize to watch TV with each other. We also listen to music there. We usually use this space, on a weekday, between 5pm and 7pm…sometimes a little longer. 

NOTE: Not too much longer…so as not to interfere with routines and micro-rituals mentioned earlier…and…unless we are entertaining…which is not happening currently for obvious reasons.

On the weekends time spent on the first floor varies. I say that because we have a second option. Our second floor has a middle room/space, between our bedroom, my office area, and the guest bedroom that we’ve designed to be our “getaway” room. It includes a couch, pillows, some plants, and a TV. This is where we go to…get away. We either sit and watch TV, chat, or read in this space. All of the spaces mentioned and the micro-rituals followed within them contribute to massive amounts of relaxation and have been crucial to getting through the quarantine/lockdown.

Station 4

Creation/work

This space has fluctuated over time but due to the quarantine/lockdown I have come to realize the importance of “it” being a dedicated space. Up until the quarantine/lockdown my office was being used for a variety of creation/work adjacent things but it was never THE space for all of it…all of the time. Things are different now and I claim my office as THE space for creation as well as work. I added the term “work” to this section of the post because, as evidenced with previous posts, all of my “teaching” from home has been, for the most part, coming from the room I am in right now. CGP Grey and Myke Hurley talked about the creation space (and the other 3…in a sort of Q & A of Grey’s thought process related to the video) in the most recent episode of Cortex. I’ve already spent time writing about my creation/work space in a previous blog post and encourage you to go back and look at how I have set it up. I am very happy with how this space is evolving and may be announcing some exciting news related to “it” later in the summer.

The last thing I’d like to address, related to my creation/work space, is how I’m dealing with shutting down. I know I’m not alone however, this has historically been very difficult for me to do which is why I am so anxious a lot of the time. Reading some of Newport’s thoughts about the importance of shutting down got me thinking about how I could add to my existing rituals…in an effort to better manage things. One thing I did was utilize the Keyboard Maestro app on my MacBook Pro. 

NOTE: I’ve been using this app for a few weeks now and will be talking more about it in another blog post. You may be wondering, what, if anything does an app that helps you automate have anything to do with creating/fine tuning a shutdown ritual?

I created 2 Macros (again…I will go into more detail in a future post…but for now understand that a Macro is a single instruction that expands automatically into a set of instructions to perform a particular task) that begin to wrap my head around the fact that shutting down is eminent. For example, I have a time based Macro that presents a notification about 30 minutes before my workday is done. Then, when I’m finished, I initiate a Macro that shuts down the apps I’ve been using throughout out the day and presents a large message telling me literally to shut it down! I think it’s important to mention that this second Macro is initiated by me personally. It’s important because, by initiating it personally, I am programming my brain to understand that the work day is done and it is time to relax and attend to other things. I’ve also added a habit of “No School after 4pm” to the Steaks app. Habits like this “count” automatically each day and if I “break” the habit, I have to manually go into the app and record that…I know…it sounds a little like I’m shaming myself but…on the positive side…I can see over time how long I made it without…in this case “doing school” after 4pm. These new micro-rituals are helpful but the real “work” comes after I leave my desk. 

I have to have the willpower NOT to check email or other work related things. My ability to restrain myself is dependent on the amount of stress I’m feeling on any given day. For example, as of this writing…it is the last week of school. There are a lot of things we’ve had to do in the process of shutting things down for the year. Case in point, last week, we had to go to school and close out our rooms and complete some end of year paper work. Leading up to that day I found it difficult to restrain from checking email and other things after work because I did not want to miss any changes to the schedule and/or protocol for end of year procedures. In the past, I’ve gone as far as taking work email from my iPhone and decided to do the same on my iPad Pro. 

UPDATE: I’ve done that again…no email on the iPhone or iPad Pro.

I have to physically go to another floor in my house (the 2nd)…to access this stuff! Again…sounds a bit like shaming…can you imagine my going up the stairs to check email thinking that I have failed?!

I want to spend more time reading Newport’s thoughts on shutting down and see how I can integrate his thinking into my existing micro-rituals so that my anxiety does not interfere with ANY of the stations I’ve written about here…in an effort to support the grand ritual of how I make it through any given day.