Stop! Look! Listen! Transitions!

          Transitions. I have a love-hate relationship with them. Given my personality, I enjoy change. I start to get bored and unmotivated if my life stays the same too long. As much as I have come to value routines and schedules, I must have fun, too. Or at least change. When small changes occur within my usual schedule, I stay energized and motivated. The changes might be as little as getting to sleep in unexpectedly or lunch with an old friend.

          When changes are small, like that. It’s easy to incorporate them into my daily routines. I just rearrange when I do each day’s tasks. Since I’m not a rigid schedule-keeper, that small bit of change does not usually derail me from consistent productivity. It is when larger interruptions and changes occur, or the small ones accumulate too fast, that I am susceptible to jumping the track. Or crashing the train.

          Transitions, those times when an aspect of usual daily life is subjected to long-term or permanent change, are even worse! The bigger the transition, the more danger to my productivity train. Moves, of which I’ve had plenty, are the worst. Those types of transitions take longer. There’s the packing, the actual moving, the unpacking and the getting plugged in at the new place. Sometimes it takes weeks on either side of the move for me to re-establish a routine that works! (Although I think Kitty has me beat on the length of a moving transition. )

          Even small transitions can sometimes wreck havoc. Like the havoc wrought in my schedule by no longer having to spend several hours three times a week with an elderly relative. I easily added those hours into my routine. In fact, that transition actually benefited my writing. I had 2-3 hours of writing time while waiting for said relative. Now that I am no longer needed as taxi driver, I can stay at home and write. Right? Wrong!

          Home includes many distractions. Distractions I must retrain myself to appropriately ignore. (That’s why I love going to a coffee shop to write. Those distractions can’t distract me. It’s not feasible at the moment, though, to go to the coffee shop 2-3 times a week.) This is a typical transition time, when my schedule and established routines do not keep me focused and on track. If I am to stay productive, I must go through each day as intentionally as possible and rebuild my routines. Those routines are the track or the structure that keeps me focused and progressing toward what I’m trying to produce.

          In this instance, I can just try to re-institute a previous routine. Every morning, sometime between 9:00 am and noon, I will write at least 30 minutes. More often than not, those few minutes multiply into much more. It may seem a step back from the 2-3 hours was getting, but it is forward progress. That is the goal.

          This transition has not been as devastating as some I’ve experienced. I have been able to easily readjust my daily activities and responsibilities to include my writing goals. Let’s hope my next transition, an upcoming vacation, is as smooth!

          Transitions. How do they affect you? What are some of the things you do to get yourself back on track after a change in routine (or to anticipate that change).

While it may seem as though I am not writing about procrastination or Anti-Procrastination Month, every one of the posts I’ve posted or planned relate to something that is either helping or hindering me in tackling my procrastinated projects.