I’ve been changing up my morning routine the last few days from what I normally do—not least of which, I’ve been getting up an hour earlier. This is motivated by not wanting my son to be alone when he’s getting ready for school (and not wanting him to miss the bus, to be honest), but it has also opened up my day in small but unexpected ways.

For instance, as someone who works from home, I rarely put on makeup. I don’t go to work in sweatpants or anything (mostly because I hates them, precious), but my look is usually to throw my hair up in a clip or a ponytail and put on the same jewellery I wear every day and call it good. Even putting mascara on is a stretch for me.

But, not long ago, I told my husband that I missed the days when I felt like I had time to put on makeup every day. Not because I want to do it for other people, but I like playing with the artistry of it. (And I like how it makes me feel, to be honest again.) However, with every second of my day scheduled, none of it for playing with makeup, it rarely happened.

This morning, I put it on, just because I had time and I wanted to.

I’ve been “settling in” to this new work mindset, and loving it. I’m still figuring out my new systems so I can keep myself on track—both toward my goals and with using lower-stress methods to get there—but I definitely feel more relaxed than I did even a week ago, when I was on holidays but pondering going back to work and what that would look like.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

No More Time Blocking

I’ve been ignoring my daily time-block schedule completely. I haven’t erased the blocks, because I’m not sure that’s what I want to do, but, other than to check what scheduled commitments I have in a day (such as running kids to work or doing coaching calls), I haven’t even looked at my calendar.

Setting Intentions, Not Goals

I created a Kan-Ban style board in Asana called “Intention Planning”. (I thought I’d call it “goal planning”, but even that seemed too lofty and rigid and something in me rebelled.) The columns on the board are labelled with time frames, like This Week, This Month, This Quarter, This Season, This Year, Next Year, and Future.

I also have three extra columns on the far right for Book Ideas, Knitting Ideas, and Other Ideas. I wanted to keep these handy when looking at my planning board without having them right in my face. But that way, I can keep those great ideas I had in mind for when I’m ready to slot them in.

I used to track these intentions in a monthly BuJo page, and I still have that (for the moment), but the Asana board has a few advantages that my BuJo (Bullet Journal) doesn’t:

1. Since I already use Asana for my to-do list and business planning, it’s very easy to add tasks and projects I already have in here to my Intention Planning board with a general time frame of when I hope to get to them.

2. It’s also super easy to move things between columns as new opportunities arise, if something takes longer than I anticipate, or as the Spirit leads.

3. In my BuJo, it’s too easy to lose track of the million ideas I’ve had that I want to become priorities, because I’m not going to write them all down on my “future” category every month and I rarely remember to go look through my “ideas” pages. This way, they stay in an easy-to-access place on a page I intend to look at every day. With a simple scroll right, I can see what I hoped to pull onto the priority list and how soon I want it to be a priority without a bunch of time-consuming copying and pasting. And, if priorities change, reordering them is a simple drag-and-drop away.

Note: I set this up yesterday, so I expect it to fluctuate some as I dig into using it. It already has—I originally had a Today category, but found that got a bit too granular and required too much fussing around with re-ordering things. My normal My Tasks pane is suitable for tracking today’s list, and since the projects on the Intention Planning are easy to drag around, on my Intentions board, I simply drag something up the list if I want to tackle it today instead of later in the week, then change the due date.

Overall, this feels like a much more sane and intentional way of working for me right now. I’m enjoying work, I’m honouring my creativity, and I’m even taking walks sometimes. And when I’m doing things for my family (such as attending the auditions for the new kids’ musical last night for Jabin—more on that in another post), I don’t have a voice in the back of my mind saying, You should be working right now.

And that feels freakin’ amazing.

About a Girl…

For the last couple years, I’ve had a morning journaling routine. I haven’t exactly “switched” to a morning blogging routine, as I’m still making quick notes in my journal every day (not everything is meant for a public blog, after all), but I find I’m enjoying this return to posting my thoughts here. The writing here is slightly more structured and creative, and I also know it’s more likely I’ll come back and look at it again later.

So, for as long as I feel the urge, I may be blogging pretty regularly, at least on weekdays, but I won’t always be reposting them to social media. If you’re the kind of person who likes to see these types of posts and you want to keep tabs on my progress into Slow Productivity (and daily rambling thoughts), you can subscribe to this blog through the form in the sidebar so the posts will be emailed to you the day after they go up.

And please, when you read, leave a comment here. One of my favourite things about blogging is the conversations it sparks. Once Facebook came along, people stopped commenting on blogs as much, and, for the bloggers, this can be tough. Your comment on Facebook goes away, lost in an ever-moving tsunami of links and content. Your comment here remains, and when I look back at this post in years to come, I remember you and that you were part of my life at this point and the connection is strengthened all over again.

Just food for thought.

Happy Wednesday, friend. What’s your favourite part of your morning routine? If you don’t have a favourite part, or if you don’t have a morning routine, what would you like to start incorporating?