A little trick that I’ve been enjoying thinking about, that I’ve found helpful, is this idea of kind of taking on a character.
You know, if I’m finding that I’m having trouble behaving in the way that I want to behave, then I can sort of imagine a character who would do the things that I want to do.
So I had this last week, when I was wasting too much time, and I just wasn’t spending any time working, I was just wasting my time, playing games, amusing myself, and I felt like OK, I really need to find some way to be able to focus on work and be able to really make that my activity, to really get into it.
Rather than just feel like I’m like forcing myself to get through some work, and then, you know, then I’ll have fun after, but instead actually dive into work and do things that I really believe are useful and really get into them.
So a couple days ago, in the morning, I just happened to start reading about this fictional detective character, Nero Wolfe.
I never heard of him before, but I read about how he has this very particular daily schedule, where he always, you know, wakes up and he eats his meals, you know, the same time every day, and he has a very defined schedule, and then, you know, during the time when he’s not eating or tending his plants, he is then in his office hours, and that’s when he actually does his detective work.
And you know, I’m not a detective, but you know, something about this kind of way that he set up this system, this highly organized system, it made it something kind of fun for me.
It made it kind of fun to imagine taking on some of those qualities, so that I could actually sort of imagine myself: well, I can also run my day like this.
I can have my set meal times, and then I can have my time in the office.
And you know, I’m not doing private eye work, but I can sort of bring a little bit of that feeling to it.
And it seems like there’s something about this that just makes work a little more fun, if we can take on some of the qualities of a character that does this kind of thing.
Now, it’s not necessarily like becoming, you know, entirely, you know, feeling like I am becoming this character, you know, entirely playing a role, but simply taking on some of the qualities of a character.
And it can be a mix of all kinds of different characters, but anybody that gives some kind of an inspiration to behaving in a certain way.
So it seems like anytime there’s a character who is somebody who works in an office, you know, and like has this kind of very organized system of working professionally: if we sort of imagine that character a little bit, then we can kind of have sort of a fun way of getting into a state of mind for working.
And of course, you can imagine the opposite as well.
If we take on, you know, we’re inspired by characters who are, you know, always, you know, lazy drunks, then it would make it kind of more fun to be a lazy drunk.
So it seems like we can pick the characters that are inspiring to us, and we can sort of make a blend of all the little pieces of these characters, and use some of these qualities to influence our own qualities.
So in the case of Nero Wolfe, it’s a sense of being very organized and having a very strong established habit of working regularly, and you know, managing my schedule in a very organized way.
And I can sort of just add a little bit of that to my life.
So I’d be very curious to hear if there are any characters that you’ve been working with, or that you can imagine possibly bringing in to your imagination to make that little adjustment in how you live.
#character #imagination #routine