You don’t want to read this

I mean, part of me doesn’t want you to read this. Because I’m about to make a public commitment, and if you read about it, then…

I’ll feel even more compelled to honor it every single day

Which is precisely the point. And why I’m posting this on a blog that isn’t even ready for public viewing yet.

I’ll probably write at some point about the perils of pseudo-freedom and how it sabotages our capacity to create what we most want, and prevents us from experiencing real freedom. But for now let’s just say that I’ve been having this tendency to be um, flaky when it comes to maintaining and honoring habits that serve my ability to create.

Or any habit for that matter.

You too? Happy to meet you…

But for now, instead of musing about why we sometimes believe that regularity and creativity don’t go together, and why we tend to approach rituals as if they were going to stifle our so-called freedom, I want to jump right into the rituals I’ve decided to initiate for myself.

Because this post is not a “how and why you can do this”. It’s a “here’s what I decided to do”.

I decided to create clear and defined entry and exit points to my workweek days. Clear and defined as in “consciously decided” and “deliberately applied”. Effective today.

I’ve recognized for a long time that clarity of intent and conscious action surpass I’ll-wing-it-when-I-feel-like-it any day of the week. Especially when it comes to creative output and the ability to do meaningful work on a consistent basis, without unnecessary struggles.

Yet, not so surprinsingly, my intentions are not always followed by tangible results — another way to say that I still revert back to the old, default, obsolete tendency of just doing things when I feel like it instead of doing what I previously consciously decided.

When we recognize this we have two choices:

Beat ourselves on the head for being so lazy. Or be kind and clever.

I prefer to be kind and clever. And even if you’re still in the habit of beating yourself on the head, I bet you would still prefer not to. So let’s not to.

The best way to be both kind and clever is to organize the environment so that it supports what we want to create. In that case, what I want is to:

Start the day clear, calm, inspired and focused

… So that I can really give of myself and create what I most want to create, and do so fully engaged… without falling into busyness, reactivity or avoidance. At the heart of such a start is a writing period, accomplished before anything else is done — because I know that, for me, writing on a regular basis is the single most important thing I can do to express myself fully and make my projects come into being.

And the corollary to that start is to:

End the day with a sense of closure, purpose, and creative readiness for what lies ahead

… So that I can let go of the day during the evening, and be in an optimal position to continue tomorrow.

Now, what would best support such an inspired entry and a graceful exit?

An entry ritual and an exit ritual

A set of small, simple actions stringed together when I enter my workspace in the morning, and another set of simple, small actions when I leave at night. Introduced progressively over an 8-week period  to ease into it in an easy and relaxed way, without overwhelm.

I must credit Charlie Gilkey for reminding me recently of the importance of having such entry/exit rituals, and Leo Babauta for easing into a new habit over an 8-week period instead of jumping right away into the thick of it.

Here are screenshots of what each ritual will look like (the left list represents what I want to do, and the right one what I’ll start with at the beginning):

Some of the points on each list might be a bit cryptic. If you’d like me to elaborate, let me know and I’ll clarify in a follow-up.

I’ll post daily updates on how I stick to those entry/exit rituals on a daytum page, and, to make good measure, on twitter. Simple accountability, yet another way of being clever with our own dumbness

If you’d like some specifics on how to implement a new ritual like this, I’ll be happy to go into more details as well.

What do you think? If you’ve been reading despite the headline warning, then you might be already toying with the idea of trying something similar. How would you start your day to really support what you’re up to? How would you end it?

Would you feel such a ritual to be freeing, or constraining? Any resistance or objection coming up when you consider such a thing?