How did I come to this mind blowing and wondrous conclusion? I'm glad you asked .....
There I was, twiddling my thumbs, thinking that I had reached capacity and taking amazing leaps forward in my bid to becoming the reigning Queen of Procrastination when suddenly, I was faced with the need to move out of my nice comfortable office surrounded by my familiar and favourite distractions - people, twitter, face book, emails and doodling- for the day and work somewhere else. Argh, what a shock to the system!
Now not only did I need to work in a different environment I also had that overarching feeling that, as I was no longer available to call on or contact in the usual ways, I needed to almost justify my use of the time and my choice of new work venue.
An amazing thing happened ...... I was so productive that day! Unbelievably so in fact! All the mental blocks I had put up against doing certain tasks and starting particular projects seemed to disappear and I found myself striking task after task off my list. Documents that I'd been putting off writing practically wrote themselves and the wording for those, shall we call them "less than fun" emails just flowed freely, none of the usual pondering over getting just the right wording to ensure the message is received clearly but feelings are trampled on. It all just worked.
So I got to thinking....Why, when I have felt so stuck has everything just fallen into place with such ease? The answer I came up with was the change in location. It seems that in changing my physical workspace I had also, unexpectedly made a profound change on my mental workspace as well and the result was that I was more productive in that single day than I had been for a long time.
In my day job I often hear people saying that they feel stuck, are finding it difficult to remain enthused or engaged by the work they are doing, be it a project, report or assignment. From now on I will be suggesting they consider a change of workspace, just for a day, and see if they find that helps to get those creative juices flowing again. For me, the change really was better than a rest.
"Cosy Cat" image used under CC Licence courtesy of DOH4
