Herman School of Business
Change Your Scenery
What do you do when the humdrum hits you and it tries to bring your spirit down? In the last posting I went to some humor to break the gray day mood. There are other things you can do as well.
The rains keep falling here…did the sun burn out?...and now it is also getting colder which means we have ice too, just like the Midwest has suffered for about a week. In your every day routine you allow yourself to slide into a rut. You need not do that.
Suggestion number one is to change up the scenery. This week I worked like I always do in my basement office, with no windows. Years ago it was a splendid idea to turn the dungeon part of the house into my hide-away work area. Our house is old and it had those thick craggy walls of stone in the foundation. There was well equipment to filter the water, an old oil tank left over from before the conversion to a modern furnace, picture something from the early 1930’s and that was it. Now, it was transformed into a warm room split down the middle by the stairs and it is beautiful. There is carpet, some nice tiled area, great built in nooks and crannies and the ceiling is wood, like a floor would be, because I like being different. There are two desks, three computers, phone lines, fax machines, copiers, and in the “resting” part of the space is the TV/VCR/DVD combo with the sleep sofa, loveseat and shelves filled with baseball and Presidential memorabilia.
It is the kind of space you can spend days and weeks in if you have too. There is even a place my wife shows visitors and says “Look, Herman even built a little house for his refrigerator.” Hey, why walk all the way up those steps for another Coke.
But this past week there were too many straight hours down there. And by Friday night I was getting quite grumpy. My body wanted some sunlight, and my mind wanted to look out a window. Yesterday I did two things about it. One, I went to the park near our home with the one mile track and started a daily walk around it. Ahh, breathing fresh, outdoor, gray wet air. No sun but at least some fresh air. And number two, I went out into our barn (it’s bigger than our house) where last summer I converted the loft into another office space. So, Friday I hooked up the remote radio gear the studio has sent me and today I am putting some of my personal stuff on the new shelves out there so Monday morning while you read this, I will be working part of the time in the new place with two huge picture windows. I can look out the back and see my neighbors goats, rooster and chickens running around or I can look out the front picture window and look at the pool area, and the back of the old house where my wife is probably staring back at me.
These changes will get me out of the rut, and make the sun come back. My wife must be feeling in a rut too, because she just hired an architect to start drawings for an addition on the old house. Her space must be getting cramped too, but she never gets grumpy.
- Posted: 16 December 2007
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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