I spent a week away from the keyboard last month, and my neck and shoulders eased up a lot. But now I’m back to my bad old ways—I’m not taking enough breaks.

My bodyworker, Roy—who got me to exhale to such good effect last summer—recommends roll-away breaks every half hour or so.  Roll chair back from computer; turn away from screen; take three breaths, focusing on the exhale (the inhale will take care of itself); and let your eyes be non-engaged for a few moments, either by closing them or gazing into the distance.  Optional: stand up. He also recommends resting by lying back over a bolster (or rolled-up blanket) at least once a day.

I have to make these breaks super-simple and inviting, or I won’t take them. The elements and what I need to make them work:

• Every half hour. Every 40 minutes might work better. I’ll experiment. But in any case, I need regular reminders that don’t annoy me. A screen-interrupter would be annoying. So would an alarm. How about a meditation bell? One that I don’t have to download? I’ll try this one.

• Turn away from the screen. The optional standing up will help with this. I could walk over to the window, which has a decent view. That would be a good incentive.

• Take three breaths. Roy says these should be through the mouth, not the nose, because opening your mouth relaxes the jaw (and by extension, the neck). So it’s more like a sigh. OK, sighing I can get behind! I used to sigh a lot, just naturally, until an irritable boyfriend complained about it. This was, um, decades ago. I miss sighing! Incentive! Wait, but ex-BF memory is disincentive. Don’t want that baggage mucking up my nice break. Seriously, it’s decades old, can we let it go? Time to reclaim sighing! Will experiment. If sighing feels great, I’ll sigh. If not, just call it an exhale.

• Close eyes or gaze into the distance: Gazing (non-engagedly) at the view is definitely an incentive.

Funny how much prep I need for something as basic as taking breaks. That’s habits for you.

The resting over a bolster part could be a way to mark the transition between work time and done-with-work time. I work late, so that’s going to be tougher. I’ll start with the breaks.

To review The Plan for Happy Breaks:

Set online chime to go off every 30 to 40 minutes. When it chimes:

1.  Stand up.
2.  Walk over to window.
3.  Sigh three times.

P.S. Got any non-annoying timers to recommend? Let me know in the comments!

This yuck-o-meter is versatile. It estimates time, too! Some yuck-o-meter time estimates in action:

•Straighten work area: FIVE BILLION HOURS
Alternate estimate: 1/2 hour
Time it actually took: 2 hours (hm, I’m way ahead of five billion)
Yuck factor: Medium

•Check email: ONE HOUR, and I’ll feel guilty about spending time on it
•Send 3 particular emails: ONE HOUR, but it would take “other people” less time
Alternate estimate: 1/2 hour for both tasks together
Time it actually took: 2 hours
Yuck factor: Well, I didn’t feel guilty, but I did feel kind of hassled.

•Prep for workshop: TWENTY BILLION HOURS total, FIVE HOURS today and it won’t feel like enough
Alternate estimate: 1.5 hours today
Time it actually took: 1.5 hours (but that still leaves twenty billion minus 1.5 hours to go, sigh)
Yuck factor: Tolerable

•Lunch and dinner: FOUR HOURS AND DON’T YOU RUSH ME!
Alternate estimate: 20 minutes (huh? who was I kidding?)
Time it actually took: 45 minutes
Yuck factor: None. Eating is fun!

Hm, that was a decent day. Thanks, yuck-o-meter!

The water isn’t going to get any warmer.

You can step into the pool slowly, or dive in, or jump in, or sit at the edge and splash yourself for a while—all fine. (Splashing first—my favorite.)

But if you want to go in—today, this week, this month—know that the water won’t get any warmer while you’re waiting.

One of my intentions for the coming year is to be a little more conscious of the time I spend online. Those hours and hours that go by as I’m mindlessly consumed by my inbox, or following links, or scanning Twitter—my colleague Nannette calls this “getting lost.” I’d like to be less lost…or lost less.

A delightful book, Wisdom 2.0, offers practical ways of dealing with this phenomenon.  The author, Soren Gordhamer, presents conferences on using technology for genuine connection rather than distraction—the second annual Wisdom 2.0 Conference is coming up in February, in Silicon Valley.

The book’s chapters are short and pithy, with lots of simple and useful exercises.

I’m working with the very first exercise. When I’m at the computer and feeling scattered or overly focused, the idea is to do three things (actually, Soren frames this as two things—he combines the first two steps below into one—but it’s helpful for me to separate them):

• Notice my state of mind. Bored? Excited? Connected? Lonely? Am I feeling constricted? Expansive?

• Notice what’s going on in my body. Shoulders tight? Breathing shallow? Relaxed anywhere?

• Explore my options by asking, “What would be best for me right now?”

What I find, in my experiments with this practice, is that the last question sometimes scares me off. I mean, it’s a wonderful question, but I’m someone who has trouble taking a stretch break even when my shoulders are crying out for one. “What would be best for me right now?” feels momentous—it implies that I might need to do something different. If I know this question is coming up, I might skip the earlier questions so I can stay lost in cyberland.

But to ask just the first two questions, on a semi-regular basis—that would be enormous progress. Not asking in order to change anything, just to notice. Even that bit of awareness could start to bring me back from the land of the lost.

Maybe I could follow the two questions with two conscious breaths. Ahhh.

I’ll keep it simple and start with:

• What’s my state of mind right now? (Hm. A little impatient. Feeling a little behind.)

• What’s going on in my body? (Back of my neck is tight. Ankles crossed. I’m uncrossing them. I think I will stand up and stretch.)

Happy New Year!

A couple of projects have been stalled lately because my Inner Toddler has refused to settle down and work. One look at the to-do list, and the Inner Toddler screams! she kicks! she pounds her fists on the floor! Then she runs off to read still more recaps of Mad Men and Project Runway.

From my experience as an aunt (and more distant experience as a babysitter), I recall that neither scolding nor pleading gets you very far with toddlers. Empathy, on the other hand, will nearly always steer you right.

So that’s the tack I took this week.  I looked at my to-do list.  My Inner Toddler stamped her feet. “You really, really don’t want to work on this!” said I, the Kindly Rational Grownup. Inner Toddler glared, arms folded. “You really think it’s going to be tedious and hard,” I said. She’s still glaring, lips pressed together tight. “I don’t think it’s going to be as tedious as you think. But let’s find out. We’re going to work on this project for an hour, and you can operate the yuck-o-meter. At the end, you tell me what the yuck-o-meter says.”

So she kept busy with the yuck-o-meter while I made headway on the task list. It wasn’t tedious, exactly, but there was a lot of frustration. Oh, right—it usually takes a lot more time than I hope to get past the second-guessing-every-decision phase, until I feel some momentum. No wonder she didn’t want to settle down! Yuck-o-meter reading: Medium High.

I’ve also observed that once past the first-however-many unpleasant hours of uncertainty and frustration, things start (slowly) to get easier and more interesting. The Inner Toddler has trouble with that concept, not being so skilled at delayed gratification.

But she does like running the yuck-o-meter. So she’s getting to do that all week.

Note: Predicting how difficult/satisfying a task will be, and comparing that prediction to reality, also happens to be a technique from cognitive behavioral therapy. The Inner Toddler prefers the yuck-o-meter.