Rituals for starting, rituals for stopping - a #MindfulPhD post
I would love to be the kind of person who has a set schedule, or who got up every morning without fail to write for two uninterrupted hours before going about my day. Alas, I am perpetually working several jobs, with shifting priorities, plus managing client schedules, and a chronic illness that is predicable but not schedule-able. So, I rely on rituals to mark the beginning of my work, and the end of it. If I only have an hour to work on my writing, I need to make those minutes count, and rituals help me ease in quickly and ease out effectively.
WHY RITUALS?
There are many, many ways to think about rituals, but I like to think of them in this practical context as a cue. Cues are a powerful part of the cue---->routine----->reward cycle that is the basis of all good habits. So when I start a ritual before my writing session, it cues my brain that this is writing time, I click into the habit, and I trust that the reward is coming. The whole cycle is important, but today I'm focused on the cues. Cues are most effective for me when they involve a few different senses. I figure that the more senses are involved, the more chances my brain has to say BOOM this is what we're doing right now. Here are some of the things I use as ritual cues:
Sight: looking at a specific affirmation, sitting in a certain location to look at a view, writing down a list of tasks
Sound: starting a certain playlist, listening to a specific kind of music, putting in headphones or earplugs to block sounds
Taste: chewing gum, having a snack available, making a cup of coffee or tea
Smell: Lighting a scented candle, turning on a diffuser, the smell of your coffee, tea or other snack
Touch: Putting a lucky charm on your desk, putting your feet flat on the floor, putting your fingers over the keys and taking a deep breath
I don't do all of them all the time, obviously, but I usually create rituals that touch at least three senses. It doesn't have to take a lot of time, but a quick way to signal that work is starting, or work is ending.
MY "START WRITING" RITUAL
I am always "squeezing" writing into my schedule, and when I was writing my dissertation, I was often bouncing between locations, and times of day. I could be writing for two 25 minute pommodoro bursts in between meetings on campus, or for multiple hours at my desk at home. My ritual, then, had to be something that:
could be done anywhere
was cheap/free (can't afford a nice coffee/make myself a cup every time I start a work session)
was quick - if I only had an hour or less to write, my ritual couldn't take 20 minutes.
So here were my ingredients:
Putting my feet flat on the floor - this is something that I have been doing since my junior year of high school, where my AP Language teacher would lead us through a small ritual (Deep Breath, feet flat on the floor, and go) before a timed practice exam. So, for many, many, years, uncurling my legs from their normal cross-legged position and putting them flat on the floor was a sign that work was coming. Even if I put them back cross-legged eventually, this action is great for getting my body set.
Chewing a piece of peppermint gum - this is my coffee substitute. I buy packs of gum in bulk, and this activates my "go to work" impulse through taste. I usually have a pack of fruit/bubblegum flavored gum that I chew at other times just so I keep mint for work time. #gumaddict
Putting on a bass-heavy playlist - I love music, and often listen to documentaries or podcasts, or even fiction TV while I'm doing administrative work, or work on other projects. But for writing, I switch to music without lyrics, with a ton of bass, usually based on Skrillex or some other DJ. But some other people I know always listen to Vivaldi, or always put on show-tunes. Whatever it is, keep it the same and keep it for writing, so that the connection is as clear as possible.
And off I would go. More than anything, it signaled to my brain that the writing habit (which, as far as possible, didn't include surfing Twitter, or looking up citations, or answering email) had started, and provided a break from the other kinds of work I was doing. The more I practiced, the more the habit would cement itself, and the easier it got to make really good use of smaller chunks of time.
MY "STOP WRITING" RITUAL
I truly believe that "stop writing" ritual is even more important than my "start writing" ritual. Because I need to drop in on my writing quickly and efficiently, I have to be very conscious about how I wrap up for the day. Here are my guidelines:
Even if it isn't formal prose, try and get those last thoughts out of your brain and onto the page. I can't always recreate what was going on in my brain while writing, but it really helps me to see what was on my mind so I'm not starting cold the next session. Again, it is all about setting yourself up to be the most efficient the next time.
Make an effort to speak/feel gratitude. Writing doesn't always feel good for me. Sometimes it feels like a slog, or like a punishment, or just like it isn't flowing. But writing down something that I'm grateful for (grateful for the fact that I showed up, for the fact that my coffee tasted good, for finding a citation, for writing 300 words, whatever) helps me end the session on a positive note. End mindfully, end positively,
Stretch it out/dance around/shake it off. Literally move your body. Especially if the writing session was a tough one, give your body a chance to "feel" the reset. Switch locations, or if you can't or don't want to, just get up and stretch a little. Get a drink of water, shake your arms and legs, put on a two minute jam and dance it out. And then get back into whatever comes next.
FIND A RITUAL THAT WORKS FOR YOU.
Maybe you need a bigger chunk of time to feel good about your writing - add in some coffee making or a little journalling before. Maybe you work analog and your ritual includes using a specific pen for specific tasks. Maybe you like to see your progress, so you mark the word count down on a chart above your desk every time you finish a session.
The trick is - find what works for you. Be consistent when you find something that works. Be open to switching things around if it stops working. But treat your writing like an extraordinary event worth marking, because it is.
Journaling - a #MindfulPhD tool
I have never kept a traditional journal. When I was little (and let's face it, I haven't changed that much) I always wanted to have a journal just like Harriet from Harriet the Spy, but that was less of a journal and more of an exercise in voyeurism. But the habit of sitting down, every day, to record the day's events and my feelings always seemed appealing, but out of reach. Who has the time, or the supplies, or the life interesting enough to record?
But as I moved through life, and various journeys (the PhD, mental health, marriage, an obsession with One Direction ;) ) I realized that I was journaling, just not in the ways I had seen it done. I've also grown to appreciate the mindful aspects of journaling - taking a minute to pause and reflect on the here and now, big and small. During the PhD especially, my life seemed to move unevenly - big, huge professional goals set, but day to day life was marked by a sense of waiting - waiting for the chapter to be done, waiting for feedback, waiting for the seasons to change, waiting for the publication to come out. And everything seemed to take a back seat to the dissertation. When I think back on those five years, I think about what I accomplished, but not always about the life I had in the process. I got married, I made friends, I cooked dinners, I practiced yoga, I adopted cats, I moved, I traveled. Journaling helped me, and helps me, mark down the smaller things that happened alongside the big milestones.
So in this post, I'm introducing you to some of the ways I "journaled" during the PhD, and how I journal now. I'm also including a ton of resources to help you build a journaling practice that fits your life. I've grouped them into a few types of journals: long-form, productivity, 1-line, visual.
LONG-FORM JOURNALS
This is what people imagine, I suspect, when I mention journaling - people writing in bound notebooks with fountain pens transcribing the day's events and their emotional responses to it. But there are definitely variations here! Here are some things to consider about the long-form journaling form.
Journaling is another form of free-writing! As I went back through my Scrivener free-write files, I realized how much journaling I was actually doing, and how valuable that information was in tracking my progress through the project. Being able to track how I was emotionally processing the work of the dissertation, as well as how the ideas shifted and changed intellectually, became extremely valuable. I captured small tangents, interesting leads, and marked how much I was learning about myself as a scholar and professional in my "freewriting dissertation" journal.
You don't have to go back and reread your journal. When I was in therapy, practitioners often suggested that I journal, and I vigorously objected to the idea of writing down how I felt. I worried about having to go back and reread those entries, written at times when I was not at my best. It was liberating for me to learn that often, the value of writing a journal was not in the long-term information capture, but the in-the-moment processing. I could write and write and write, and then never look at it again. Writing was an valuable act of its own.
PRODUCTIVITY JOURNALS
I've blogged a few times about my bullet journals but in addition to keeping me productive, they also serve as a record of what I was up to, and what I was working on. In this vein, you could also consider using other productivity tools as a "productivity journal":
I run my life with a Google Calendar, and have looked back at various months and days to remember where I was, or what I was working on.
A moment in time, where I can see clearly that I was trying to set boundaries by working anywhere but on campus
Keeping a hold of old planners (I have all of mine from High School on) can be a great way to remember the day-to-day minutiae that would otherwise slip from memory.
Try taking picture of your to-do list every day, and archive in Evernote or Google Photos. Keep track of important tasks, but also record the moments in time more permanently.
1-LINE JOURNALS
These can be a great compromise for those who want to build a journaling practice without committing to a large chunk of time or energy. These take a lot of forms but here are some of my favorites:
One Line A Day Journal: Five Years of Memories, 6x9 Diary, Dated and Lined Book, Floral Sketch
This journal builds over time - one sentence a day about the highlights, with the bonus of building in a bit of reflection as you see all the previous entries for that day. Think of this as the written version of Facebook's "On this Day" algorithm!
This is also super easy to build on your own - I've seen versions on notecards, or in notebooks - just write today's date (including the year) and a quick note about the day.
Gratitude journals can also be quick and simple. Try closing off your free-write for the day, or writing in a planner, or separate notebook, a few things that you're grateful for. Finishing the work day on a positive note can help to reframe difficult or challenging work sessions - bonus!
Write down one idea, scholarly or otherwise, that struck you that day. How cool would it be to flip back, 10 years after the dissertation was defended, and see how your ideas changed over time? Other variations could include: a mantra, devotional, song lyric - the ideas are endless.
VISUAL JOURNALS
My personal favorite! I am a visual person, and now that I have a camera with me at least 70% of my day, it is so easy (and fun) to take pictures of my day as a form of visual journaling.
On Instagram, I tried to take a picture every day that I was actively writing my dissertation. You can see that series starting here but in this moment, I'm trying to take a picture every day for 100 days of a moment that I tried to be fully present for:
Lots of apps will prompt you to take a video or picture every day, and store them in a more private place than Instagram or Facebook. My favorite is 1 Second Everyday, which compiles one-second videos over the course of a week, month, or year. It might not seem like much, but the videos made over a month, or even a year, are evocative without requiring a huge amount of work on your part.
WHY JOURNAL DURING THE PHD?
In my work with clients, and my own personal experience, I see how dominant the PhD can be in the overall narrative told about life during that period. I felt that so many days were absolutely, 100% defined by my work on the degree, and for the degree, and it became hard to notice, let alone value, the other parts of life that were happening concurrently. Taking a few moments, maybe as short as one second, to document life as the PhD happens can help redirect some of that tunnel vision impulse.
But it's also a powerful tool for the degree itself. So much of the progress in our thoughts, tools, and skills during the degree can be lost when we just focus on the finished output. Tracking some of these things can not only save fleeting thoughts and ephemera (and the hard work they represent!) to the busy mind of a PhD student, but also be a good record of that work to reflect on when you feel that no progress is being made.
My co-host and partner Rebecca Enderby in all things #MindfulPhD and I are looking forward to talking on Twitter 8/7/2017 about all things journaling - follow the hashtag to hear all the wisdom that we hold collectively!
What is mindfulness?
People started recommending meditation to me when I was in high school. I, because I am at heart a contrarian, resisted the idea forever - I had no desire to sit "with my mind" because my mind was often a hostile place, swirling and negative and anxious.
But then, a therapist introduced me to a similar but distinct concept: mindfulness. Her basic explanation was that mindfulness was any time that you made an effort to be present and notice what was happening right now. Sometimes this is physical, and sometimes this is mental, and sometimes both, but it was always about what was happening now, rather than what had happened or what will happen.
(A note: I am, for the purposes of this write-up, presenting mindfulness as it exists colloquially or in a therapeutic context. I am aware of, and actually a practitioner, of mindfulness as a Buddhist practice, but that is another post for another time.)
The opposite of mindfulness is distraction. For me, this can look like: scrolling through Twitter, and looking up to see that 20 minutes have gone by, going for a run and replaying the conversation I had two weeks ago, or sitting down to write only to find myself answering emails and shopping for a fountain pen I have no intention of buying. It isn't bad, necessarily - we all spend most of our days in some version of this state. No one can be perfectly mindful all the time. But, the thinking goes, the more distracted we are, the harder it is to identify, and eventually change, unhelpful patterns, habits, and thoughts.
Okay, I said - how do I get to be less distracted? How do I get to be more mindful? And, most importantly, why would I want to be mindful about something that objectively sucked (difficult emotions, challenging situations, pain of any kind, etc)?
THE MOST FREQUENT PATH TO MINDFULNESS
The first, and most common, path into mindfulness is some kind of attention to the breath. Lots of us have (probably) been told to take a deep breath at some point in our lives, often as a remedy to an overwhelming situation. It is no surprise, then, that many mindfulness practices take the breath as the starting point. We breathe all day and all night with little to no conscious intervention - like blinking - but we can also choose to breathe on purpose. Long, slow, deep breathing has also been shown to slow stress responses, and by paying attention to the breath, one can shift towards a longer, slower, deeper breath. For me, at least, the breath is helpful because it is always there, and I can always choose to pay attention to it, or not. Even a few seconds of breathing in and out can help me get out of my head as it spins in a thousand different directions and focus back on the task at hand. And if I wander off, I can check in on my breath again with no one around me being any the wiser.
Common places/activities that can benefit directly from a mindful breath:
30 seconds during a writing break
Yoga
Before bedtime
Cardio activity
In transition points between activities
Any time you feel stressed or anxious
WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE MORE AWARE OF THINGS THAT ARE UNPLEASANT?
This continues to be my most vexing question about mindfulness. It seems counterintuitive to pay attention to how your body and mind feel and react during stressful or unpleasant situations. Everyone has their own experience, but I have absolutely found that mindfulness has helped me work with/around my anxiety.
I have a few physical giveaways that I am feeling anxious. I start to fidget, I pull on my left thumb, I start to tense up in my shoulders and back. I can also start to have headaches, or stomachaches, or even nausea. Before a more conscious mindfulness practice, I would surface from a day of writing or teaching feeling physically drained, sore, and not hungry at all. Despite those symptoms lasting for a good part of the day, I was only aware of them after the fact. I literally wouldn't notice what my body was doing, or how I was physically feeling, until after the period of stress or anxiety was over, or had abated a little bit.
Mentally, it was much of the same cloud. I would be working on something but my mind would be wandering. I would sit down to read a book and all the sudden remember that I hadn't planned dinner, and off I went. Or I would be writing, and feel so anxious about the writing that before I knew it, I had responded to every email in my inbox in excruciating detail. I wasn't disassociating - I knew that I had switched to email, or I knew I was surfing for recipes, but I wasn't always aware of the choice I was making to switch tasks, or how long I had really spent on any task.
Mindfulness gave me the tools to stop myself and say "okay, how did you get on to Twitter again?" I would notice that I was on Twitter, and stop myself to say - what made me open the tab? Did I have a research question I needed to answer or was writing starting to feel uncomfortable in some way so I switched tasks. Or, if I found myself tapping my leg, I could take a few deep breaths and say - "what is making you feel anxious right now?" To be perfectly clear, I still feel anxious sometimes. I'm just getting better, through mindfulness, of noticing the concrete symptoms of my abstract mental rhythms, and adjusting my behavior more quickly than I would have before. Rather than avoiding my anxiety, or pretending it didn't exist, I am more familiar with it and its rhythms, letting me recognize it, and deal with it.
ARE YOU MINDFUL?
There's a great measure that I have been given in various therapeutic settings to measure mindfulness. I am NOT offering this as a diagnostic tool - only medical professionals can do that - but as a way to check your own practices. Here's the link to the study about its effectiveness as a tool, and here's the sheet itself for you to fill out.
If you find that you're circling a lot of low numbers on the sheet, I encourage you to think about incorporating some mindfulness into your routines.
Follow me and Rebecca Enderby, of Enderby Yoga, as we talk mindfulness on Twitter every other Monday under the hashtag #MindfulPhD . We start Monday, 8/7, with a day of questions, conversation and resources!