01:32 A while ago I was listening to a podcast whilst doing the dishes and my ears pricked up at the mention of rituals of completion. So although i don't call them that, these rituals do form a part of my own kind of productivity jam and are something that I talk about with clients from time to time so I was really interested to hear Gretchen Rubin's take on this subject on her Happier podcast and I'll pop a link to her podcast in the show notes if you want to give that a listen Put simply, a ritual of completion is just a way of describing the thing you do to acknowledge that you've finished something. So from what I remember Gretchen mainly talked about this in relation to big projects such as the end of her book tour but in my view this idea of ritual of completion can be just as beneficial when applied on a smaller scale so when you're working on something big it will probably take you awhile to get to the end
02:22 But we can still mark the small steps that we complete along the way and that can actually be really motivating and help us see the progress that we're making. So why is it important to have these kind of rituals of completion? Well, if you often feel like you have too many tabs open in your brain it can be really useful to acknowledge that you've done as much as you intend to do on a particular piece of work That you've completed So, I don't know about you but if i start something new without properly finishing the thing i was doing before whether or not that means i've actually completely finished or if i'm just intentionally stopping
03:10 If I don't do that, I find it really difficult to be fully present with whatever i'm doing next and my poor brain just keeps wondering about the other thing. If you're wondering what kind of mini ritual you might create to mark the completion of something, a really easy simple thing that you can do that can make a big difference is to put things away and close stuff down. And I know that's not very glamorous! Yeah i'm sure you can resonate with this... It's so tempting just to reach for the next thing we want to do without tidying up after ourselves and then before you know it your desk can become an overwhelmingly inducing resting place for endless piles of stuff
03:46 Right, so you know speaking personally if only I had taken that time to pause and put things back in their rightful place when i finished working on something. I know that I would have felt so much calmer in my last nine-to-five office job when I was just surrounded by chaos! I also recommend that your ritual of completion might include some kind of a break So I've gone through phases where i would mark the transition from one piece of work to the next by doing a spot of hula hooping in the garden or when the weather wasn't quite so appealing, juggling. You know and just a quick update I have nailed the hula hooping but I'm still terrible at juggling! But moving about and using a different part of my brain gives me a really lovely boost of energy and makes it easier for me to switch to the next thing
