A Change of Pace

There’s been a little change of pace this week. I’m not sitting in my usual spot, and the shape of my day isn’t quite as it usually is. I’m starting work earlier and finishing earlier, and I’m eating breakfast, and generally mixing things up.

It’s very easy to get into a routine, and, on the whole, especially for those of us who don’t have routines imposed on us by the outside world, by the strictures of paid employment and school runs and the like, I believe that routines are a very good thing, invaluable, even.

I’m beginning to think, though, that messing about with a well-established routine might not be a bad thing, either.

This week I have been ridiculously productive, and I’m tempted to put that down to the changes I’ve made.

They aren’t permanent changes. For various reasons, it wouldn’t be at all practical for these changes to become permanent, and, even if they did, I suspect that the new routine would soon settle down and my work-rate would settle down with it. On the whole, I think I’ve developed a routine that suits me very well, and I think I’ve pretty well optimised my output, but I also think that a little change has been good for the soul, just to give me a boost, just to jolt me newly awake.

I don’t honestly believe that I sleepwalk through my day. I don’t honestly believe that it’s possible to do that and be any good at this job, but I do think that there is some pleasure to be had, some satisfaction in the comfort of routine and in knowing what comes next, and perhaps there is a risk that it can make anyone a little complacent.

I don’t want to feel complacent.

I want to feel as if my job can still be dangerous. I want to feel that I do take risks, that I do push the boundaries, that I do ask a little more of myself and a little more of my readers than do other writers.

I do not want to phone it in... ever... and I certainly hope that I’m never guilty of doing that, but, sometimes, just sometimes, I think it’s worth getting up a little earlier in the morning, or finishing work at lunchtime, or cutting off the outside world, or moving the desk, or unplugging the phone, or giving up wiki for a week, just to see how it changes my working practices, just to see whether it makes me think differently and possibly even produce something that might otherwise have laid dormant in my brain indefinitely.

It’s been a good, interesting, worthwhile exercise. I don’t know whether I have produced something new, this time, but I know, for sure, that I’ve produced more work this week than I have in any other single week since January. Perhaps it was time, and it would have happened regardless. I honestly don’t know why my productivity has been so good this week, but I’m not going to think too much about it; I’m simply going to recommend that you might like to mix it up once in a while, too... You never know what might happen.