154 - My Two Favorite Work Routines
Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!
Resources from this episode:
Show Notes:
Today, I'm going to share my two favorite work habits and that is: how I start my workday and how I finish my workday. I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there—they're pretty nerdy. Some of you are probably going to laugh and be like, I'm never going to do that, and that's fine, but they've worked for me and I really like them.
I'm trying to get back to them after this fourth baby, it takes a little bit to kind of get them in your system again, but I tell you what, when you can rock these routines, your workday is amazing.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
What I love about these work routines that I'm about to share with you is they really do help your work and your play because I found that if I have a routine to kind of start off my work mode and then wrap up my work mode it helps me turn off my work brain and be really present to play and be home and just feel like my work is done, which that's a hard thing to accomplish, but that's what I want to share with you today.
So let's jump in and I'll first talk about how I start my workday. My, I don't know, I should have a name for this, my kickoff routine. Well, it already has a name actually, because I got it from the book Two Second Lean and a lot of lean practices do this, and it's called the three S's.
I'm going to kind of explain what the three S's stand for, and that is Sort, Sweep and Standardize. Lean businesses do this because they say it really sets you up for success while you're working.
First let’s talk about Sort.
So sort means to sort through your stuff and I mean your literal stuff, your junk, your stuff that's cluttering up your desk, your stuff in the room wherever you work, go ahead and sort everything that is clutter. Cluttering your brain because it's right in front of you and get rid of the stuff that you don't need anymore.
Just get rid of it because this whole three S exercise is all about getting your workspace in a good environment for you to work effectively. So first you sort all your stuff, you get rid of all unnecessary items.
The second “s” is Sweep.
And some people call the second S shine instead of sweep, bsically, it just means to clean it. Get it tidy, like actually wipe down the surfaces, get it clean of any kind of oil or grime or whatever. And this, the beauty of three S's is it can translate to any kind of business. So if someone's working in a warehouse, they can literally sweep the floors and get them shiny or mop them.
But if you are just at a desk in your guest bedroom, like has been my life for many years of my work, it just talks about like wiping down the counters, getting everything kind of organized and nice and clean before you start your day.
The third “s” is Standardize.
This is the last activity and it basically comes in a lot of formats that depends on the nature of your work and your business, but this could just be what's the standard for your day? What is the standard setup on your desk? What is the standard—I don't know, fill in the blank.
It could be the physical standard of what your desk wants to look like, your room wants to look like, it could be, you know, maybe a standard routine that you follow for your work, but you want to kind of standardize your work is the idea so that you don't sit down and you're like, whoa, what am I doing today? What's what's the next thing I should be working on? No, you have your list. You have your standardized way to tackle your work and that helps take the process thinking out of it and helps you actually get to work.
So that's my kind of starting out routine—I really need a better name for it. The three S's Sort Sweep, Standardize. Sort all your stuff, get rid of unnecessary items. Sweep, make everything shiny and clean. Standardize your workday, standardize the setting that you have for your work at your desk as well as the activities that you follow.
If you do this, whether it's just you at your desk or whether it's a whole company, you dedicate the first 15 minutes of the day to these three activities. Now the first time you do this, it's going to take a lot longer than 15 minutes, because you might have a lot of junk. You might have a really messy, dirty place, but the idea is maybe you just do 30 minutes the first day or two. But you really want to get this whole process down to 15 minutes and if you can Sweep, Sort, and Standardize for the first 15 minutes of every day, your productivity will soar.
Now let's talk about my last routine of my workday. It's called the Shutdown Complete and I got this idea from Deep Work by Cal Newport. I believe I've talked about this on this podcast before, but it's been a while, so I felt like it needed a revisit. The Shutdown Complete routine is at the end of your day, with 15 minutes to spare, maybe 30 minutes to spare, you're going to stop all work.
You're going to open your inbox one last time. You're going to write down anything that needs your attention for the next day, whether it's from your inbox or the leftover to-dos that you didn't get finished. You write them down in your planner, you answer any urgent emails very quickly, and then you shut down your computer and you literally shut down all the apps, you close your computer.
And then this is my favorite part, which is the really geeky part, you say out loud, “Shutdown Complete.” I know that is so cheesy and kind of ridiculous, but here's the thing. If you say it out loud, it's signals to your brain, my work is done. My work is done for today and that does wonders because it allows you to be home with your kids.
It allows you to literally shut everything down and go outside and throw a Frisbee and not feel bad about it or not feel like you've missed any emails hanging over your head or not feel like you don't know what you're going to do tomorrow. You already got your list, you already have your list for tomorrow written down in your planner or on your to-dos or wherever you keep your lists.
You have it written out, it's out of your brain, you've answered all the urgent emails. Everything is ready to go for the next day and you can actually like turn everything off in your work and in your brain, most importantly. Do you see how exciting that is?
This is where I get really nerdy, but if you think about it, if you show up to work every day—or one day a week like I do—and the first thing you do is spend 15 minutes in Sorting, Sweeping, and Standardizing, getting your workspace beautiful, shiny, and then you have a standard attack mode of what you're going to do that day, then in the last 15 to 30 minutes, if you work on your shutdown routine and you shut everything down and write down everything urgent for the next work day, you just have the boundaries set around your workday. It's magical because then you can be done with your work and you can focus on play.
These two books I've mentioned today are already in the Cornerstore, but if you wanted to ever browse the Cornerstore or buy them yourself and read them head to nancyray.com/cornerstore.
The two books that are in there are called Two Second Lean and Deep Work and they are fantastic, highly recommend both of them.
I'm going to close with words from Cal Newport, who said
“What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore plays in defining the quality of our life.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
