The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Step by step

When times are tur­bu­lent and you are not sure where things are going, it feels great to take con­scious action to get a grip on the sit­u­a­tion and ensure that you stick to your plan, keep up the pace, and move in the direc­tion you want to go. This pan­dem­ic will be over soon enough and the best we can do at the moment is sim­ply to keep work­ing method­i­cal­ly and in a struc­tured way in what we believe to be the right direc­tion — one step at a time.

Help­ing yourself

It is at times like these when we great­ly ben­e­fit from the struc­ture we have already estab­lished. Hold on to your struc­ture as an anchor when every­thing around you fluc­tu­ates and moves, and you will soon see the dark clouds part­ing as these strange and uncer­tain times come to an end.

Do this

How can you hold on and to what, exact­ly? Well, I am think­ing of four aspects of your struc­ture in particular:

1. The morn­ing rou­tine. If you have a morn­ing rou­tine you always per­form to get going with the right things and set the tone for the day, now is the time to real­ly stick to it. If you do, you will not waste pre­cious time on things you lat­er regret doing instead of impor­tant things. You will pick up the pace ear­ly in the day and will start tick­ing tasks off your list, which will make you feel a lot better.
2. Work in inter­vals. In order to keep the tem­po up but also remem­ber to take fre­quent breaks, work in inter­vals using a timer. Work for 25 min­utes and take a break for 5 min­utes, just as the Pomodoro-method sug­gests we do, or work for slight­ly longer inter­vals of 45 min­utes and take a longer break of 15 min­utes every hour. If you are fac­ing a dif­fi­cult task, try work­ing for 10 min­utes, take a mini-break of 2 min­utes, and then repeat this pat­tern 5 times. Before you know it you have worked for a full hour but also got­ten a whole hand­ful of small breaks.
3. Respect your work-relat­ed ​”alone time”. Sev­er­al peo­ple have told me that they have more meet­ings than they usu­al­ly do due to them hap­pen­ing on dig­i­tal plat­forms such as Zoom or Teams. Per­haps this is so because you can no longer just ​”pop in” to see a col­league but have to sched­ule a meet­ing to check in with them. This is why you should sched­ule time for the tasks you need to have some peace and qui­et to fin­ish just as you ordi­nar­i­ly do — but per­haps you now need to reserve a bit more time than you usu­al­ly would. Esti­mate how much ​”alone time” you need to fin­ish all your tasks dur­ing a reg­u­lar week and sched­ule this time as sin­gle hours where there is space in the cal­en­dar, thus ensur­ing you real­ly have the time you need to fin­ish all your tasks.
4. Sep­a­rate work and free time. When work has moved from an office into your home where you spend quite a por­tion of your free time, the lines tend to blur and you might sud­den­ly find your­self work­ing when you are actu­al­ly free. There is always more work that could be done — regard­less of how much you do. This is why you need to make it clear to your­self when you have stopped work­ing for the day. Lock your com­put­er away in a cup­board, drape your desk with a sheet, or place some kind of hood over your com­put­er screen so that you will have to make a dis­tinct effort to start work­ing. If you do this, it will be much eas­i­er to catch your­self ​”get­ting back to work” when you are not sup­posed to than it oth­er­wise might be and you will respect your free time to a greater extent.

Stay­ing in con­trol as cir­cum­stances sway

If you stick to and hold firm­ly on to your struc­ture (and let the struc­ture have a firm grip on you as well), you will get things done faster and main­tain a stead­ier pace than you would with­out it. You will get through any tough times method­i­cal­ly and be able to do what­ev­er you need to right now which will make your work and life eas­i­er lat­er on. Get a grip and stay in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion instead of let­ting cir­cum­stances con­trol you.

How are you doing right now?

What part of your struc­ture is most impor­tant to you right now? What trick will you make use of to tack­le tricky sit­u­a­tions you might find your­self in? It feels more impor­tant than ever to sup­port one anoth­er and I am glad to do my part by shar­ing your tips and advice with oth­ers — so feel free to email me and I will make sure to pass your tips and tricks on to oth­ers in need of them.

(Do you know what the risk of break­ing your rou­tine is?)