Change of scenery and complacency

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba. That's me. Where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] As an experiment, I thought I would read out loud one of the notes I wrote last year on my blog. This one is titled, Change of Scenery and Complacency. I start out the note by quoting something that Chris Coyier wrote on his blog last year. Here's the quote.

[00:00:35] What I do think is helpful is scenery changes. I've got a great desk and I can do the majority of my work there, but sometimes I like to take a laptop over to a coffee shop just to switch it up a bit and usually combine that with changing gears with what I'm working on.

[00:00:51] I really liked this quote. I wrote this note at one of my favorite coworking spaces in the Rockies. The space is chic, cozy, and has all the amenities that make a great coworking space. Good coffee, quiet but not too quiet, interesting space, and a fantastic staff. Every time I'm there, I am delighted. I feel rejuvenated creatively. And I think to myself, I should come here more often. But, while I love this co working space, it's not that I should come here more often. It's that I should change up my scenery a little more often than I do. Because like Chris, I find a change of scenery really helpful. It can get you out of a rut, help you feel more motivated and inspired, and make you see things from a different perspective.

[00:01:40] In the note, I share a clip from the animated movie Big Hero 6 where a big brother, he is trying to help his little brother win a competition and the little one is, you know, having a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. And so he picks him up and tosses him around and turns him upside down and says, find a new perspective. And I really love that scene. I'll link it in the show notes.

[00:02:09] There's this idea of the ideal work environment, and there's a lot of value in creating a regular working space that's conducive to productivity, tailored uniquely to your preferences. You walk into a space made for working and mentally switch gears into work mode. You walk out of that space, switch gears into non work mode. Because, you know, your environment, it matters.

[00:02:32] Simultaneously, changing up your work environment once in a while is also helpful. As someone who's worked from home for her entire adult life, I find there's something really nice about sometimes making the effort to leave the house and go somewhere else to work.

[00:02:47] You've made all this effort, so now you must be productive. Because otherwise that effort was wasted. Both things are true, always having an unpredictable workspace would hinder your productivity because paper cuts add up, but working from the same exact space all the time can also be a hindrance.

[00:03:06] Perhaps that's why I find myself making adjustments to my home office every couple years. In fact, I'm in the process of creating a new feature wall in my office and am experimenting with a second monitor. Historically, I'm a single monitor advocate.

[00:03:20] As human beings, we become comfortable with the status quo. Even if the status quo is not a great situation. The effort required to change anything feels too much even if it would be an improvement. But perhaps we should practice making that effort. Change, any change, big or small, requires you to challenge your own complacency more. To not let yourself be lulled by the status quo by just how this is how it is. You know, that's a dangerous trap.

[00:03:50] And my note, it ends there. By the way, that feature wall, I'm still working on it because I am slow and there's a lot going on. But I'm working on it. And I've been thinking about this note a lot recently because it's been a while since I left my home office and worked from somewhere else.

[00:04:10] There's always too many meetings that I don't want to take from anywhere else. And I've been wondering about how that might have been affecting my productivity. Have I accidentally or even unwillingly become complacent and not allowed enough change in my own environment that could be good for me?

[00:04:34] Challenging my own assumptions and trying to, you know, not have a blind spot about the things I'm doing myself, which is hard to do. Hard to do, admittedly. It's much easier if someone else points it out for you, but anyway. That is today's piece.

[00:04:56] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?