Dear Friends,
When I worked at Water Street Kitchen, a stellar restaurant with high standards among the staff, I picked up a maxim: “The short way is the long way, and the long way is the short way.” When a server was tempted to take a shortcut on a cleaning task or an organizing project, a team mate might say “The short way is the long way, and the long way is the short way,” or sometimes I could hear someone dork-ily saying it to themselves.
This phrase got so overused that it would make us laugh, but we didn’t stop saying it. Even after it became cliché, it did something important, which was to subtly pass around the reminder that we collectively cared about getting things right and wanted to keep our standards high, no matter how tempting it can be to take shortcuts.
Nothing against shortcuts. Among other things, they can save lives in emergency situations. And if you find a shortcut that makes my work life more efficient, bring it on, I’m all for it!
At the Kitchen, our problem was with “faux shortcuts,” the kind that are enticing because you think they’ll be faster, and they end up requiring you — or a team mate of yours, who won’t be too happy about it — to go back and clean up shoddy work.
I started calling these “shortcut traps.” My guiding heuristic became:
Actual shortcuts = fine. Shortcut traps = beware.
How do we know the difference? It is easier in team situations where there is a strong culture of excellence, communication, etc. But I don’t work at the restaurant anymore, and I don’t have those fantastic colleagues showing up at my elbow, reminding me to take my time and do things right, while making me giggle because they did it in some combination of funny voices and cat meows. Now that my work involves mostly just me, I have had to develop a system, because yoga teachers get just as sucked into faux shortcuts as anybody.
I am currently overhauling a website, onboarding some new software, adding to and rearranging my schedule, and generally preparing for a busy summer here in Woods Hole. While my son, Leif, is in preschool, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time at my computer, feeling overwhelmed, trying to get everything done before I have to pick him up again and worrying that the summer is bearing down too quickly.
When I set these (mostly self-imposed, though not entirely) deadlines, my first impulse was to dive into each work session and rush through as many tasks as I could in the time that I had. I felt squeezed; I hardly breathed. I felt like I was going as fast as I could… but I could also feel how inefficient it was, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t able to think very creatively.
Why didn’t a hundred little shortcuts taken add up to one BIG shortcut that would get my work done more quickly? Because they were all faux shortcuts. “The short way is the long way and the long way is the short way.” I had to learn how to consciously choose to work in the way that looked longer… and trust that it was going to get me where I wanted to go. Maybe not as fast I’d like, but maybe not as slow as I feared. Let the faux shortcuts sing their siren songs.
The system I developed works for me because it involves breathing more. It involves taking a moment of quiet. It involves self-kindness. Luckily, I know how to do those things because of yoga. And I enjoy doing those things! Which means it’s a system I might actually stick with.
There are 5 parts to this. You certainly don’t need to adopt my system, but maybe you can apply one or two of these practices to your work, or any project you take on that would benefit from focus, presence, or calm (and isn’t that pretty much all projects?)
In short:
Take the time to plan.
Have a checklist/ritual.
Gift yourself time.
Reframe.
Connect with your “why.”
More on each of these elements:
Take the time to plan. This one seems obvious, but some of us don’t do it. Anxiety is a big reason we don’t do it, and if that is the case for you, please, show yourself a lot of compassion (light a candle, make yourself a cup of your favorite beverage, whatever you have to do) and sit down and do it anyway. My experience was that I got way less anxious when I just did the planning. Every week. It only takes a few minutes.
Laura Vanderkam has some great strategies for managing time, and she recommends planning your following week on Fridays, which I find works well.
I used to be stuck in the habit of only attending to today and (maybe, if I had the head space) tomorrow. I do not recommend this! Now, I plan my whole week, right down to what project I’m set to work on in a given hour on a Thursday.
I want to be clear: I might overhaul my plan between now and then, but at least I have a default. That calms my anxiety. Changes and adjustments happen mid-stream, every single week, but they happen within the scaffolding of the whole week. I make better choices and adjustments when I’m looking at that day or work session in context.
Have a starting checklist/ritual. Do you ever find that starting a work session is the hardest part? I always used to do it in a disorganized way, owing in part to the fact that I wasn’t usually sure what exactly I was going to work on. Now that I decide that in advance (see #1), it’s a lot easier. What I used to do was: sit down, get up to get my cup of coffee, sit down, get up because I realized I had to pee, sit down and maybe get one email read before I realized I needed to get up and get my laptop’s power chord….etc.
A checklist made it so simple. Included is to set my phone and computer to “do not disturb.” Your list can have whatever you want on there, whatever gets you into a work mindset. I also include “treats” for myself, like lighting a pleasant candle and getting out my favorite type of pencil. Sometimes, it’s the little things.
Once you settle on what you want to be on your list, having it be the same every time makes it a ritual, and rituals tend to be calming.
The most important part of my checklist is doing an embodiment practice before I sit down. It’s often just ONE MINUTE, but that minute makes a huge difference. I recommend setting a timer. I often do yoga in this time, but it could be anything done mindfully, including walking, lying or rolling on the floor, breath work, or other movements.
Gift yourself some time. I have discovered the importance of scheduling time for myself through being a mom. But we all should do it. Right in that schedule that I lay out for myself on Fridays, I BLOCK OFF time that is just a gift to myself. No “work.” I often use it to do a personal yoga practice, but it doesn’t have to be that. The rule I made for myself was that I could do anything in that time that felt like a gift to myself. I try to stay off of screens, but no rules other than that.
It helps me to have this explicitly non-work activity blocked off in my work schedule. Because it’s actually related. I’m simply better at my work when I’m refreshed. It’s another example of the short way being the long way.
Reframe this whole project as offering kindness to your future self. You can think of all of these actions that I’m recommending as little offerings to a future being (you), who will be calmer, more effectual, etc. because of the kind things you are doing for that being now.
Connect with your “why.” One of the tasks I schedule into my weekly plan is a brief “values, alignment, and direction” session almost every day, usually first thing in the work day. I take a moment to remember my values and decide what direction my project needs to go to be aligned with those values. In other words, I am remembering why I do what I do, before I dive into the question “what am I doing today?” This takes five minutes or less, and on a busy day it can be tempting to skip. My anxiety tells me that it will take too long, but after I actually do it, I am calmer, Then I mutter to myself, “the short way is the long way and the long way is the short way.”