Why daily practices are the key to lasting change
I doubt I’ll be the last person you’ll hear this from.
For many of you, I’m not the first.
Yet it bears repeating: how you spend your days determines your results at the end of each week, month, year, and so on.
This is not a call to cancel long-term goal setting or an attempt to overburden your days.
It’s a simple prompt to remind us that daily practices are key if we want to nudge into reality any aspirations, goals, words for the year, or visions we identify for ourselves or our teams.
Schedule dedicated time
Are you committed to getting yourself and your team more on top of your deadlines? Dedicate 10 minutes, twice a day to reviewing and prioritizing your to do list with an app like Trello.
Want to feel more “flow” in your writing this year? Block off time time for a daily free writing session.
Looking for ways to use your privilege to support anti-racism in your workplace? At the end of each day, write down any experiences you had where the voices of Black and Indigenous folks and other people of colour were missing or ignored. Once a week, write down something you might do to help end that erasure.
Of course, not everything we do is daily.
It’s also the case for many of us that if we try to put in place too many new practices at a time (pretty much any number higher than one), we will likely fail to turn them into ongoing habits.
The point is, big things need to be broken down into smaller pieces, and we need to give those smaller pieces some dedicated space to take root before we try to plant more seeds.
When we follow this process, it quickly becomes clear why daily practices are the key to lasting change.
Start now
So, what big thing are you most fired up about right now? Not three big things, not even two . . . what is your most important thing? (And, yes, supporting your mental health through year two of this pandemic absolutely counts!)
Got it? Now, what’s a daily or at most weekly practice you will commit to doing to move it forward?
Me? I want more connection and community in my work days.
I live somewhere under a “stay at home” order; but, my partner’s in-person job is deemed essential and while our daughter is currently doing virtual school between her two houses, we’re hopeful in-person school will resume soon.
So, I’m on my own for two to three work days a week temporarily and eventually I’ll go back to all five.
As someone who used to work in an office with a team and used to live with five other people in a co-house, that is too much solo time.
Join me
So what’s my new practice?
I’m going to start hosting a virtual co-working drop-in on Tuesdays from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm.
The first 15 minutes I’ll lead a quick practice to share our goals for the session. We’ll then do two 25 minute blocks of work with a 5 minute break in between (two pomodoros, for those familiar). The last 20 minutes will be some optional social connection (if you want to keep working solo, you can sign off and go for it, no hard feelings.)
Interested in joining me? Sign up here to get the link emailed to you. All are welcome!
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