0:01 Hi, this is Katie and thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space podcast. And today I wanted to talk about exits and reentry.
0:13 And I put that in that order because I think it's really important to look at how you're exiting something in order to set up your reentry.
0:26 But it is a little bit of chicken in the egg. Which one comes first? What I'm really talking about is like how you're ending your week, how you're ending your day, and then how you're re-entering the next day or week.
0:42 So when you are, whether it's work, whether it's play, whether it's whatever you are doing, there is this part of an activity that you are wrapping up something and you are kind of completing it or you are finding an exit point, mid project or mid activity that you're doing right And how you do
1:13 that and how you exit that, whether it is documenting where you are sending out some final questions if you need some answers back how you're lining things up on your desk, if it's actual physical papers or if it's organizing something.
1:31 There is this process of exiting that not only like tells your body that it's time to stop thinking about that, to stop trying to problem solve for that activity and moving on to the next one.
1:46 And also setting yourself up so that when you do reenter, it's a little easier. So whether it's a time of day that you're setting like, Hey, I'm going to be finishing this up at 3:00 PM or I have done two hours of this and I'm wrapping this up, that's as much as my body can do right now.
2:08 Or letting someone else know who is also working on the project together. Like, Hey, I'm wrapping this up at this point, or I've done this much so far.
2:17 Here are some questions that I have. It's really important to kind of look at this as a integral part of the whole creation process or getting the project done.
2:31 Now when you are reentering this project, so say it sat for the weekend, we can have done so many different things over the weekend where it's hard to remember well, where were we?
2:44 Do we have notes that we can look at? Do we have stacks of things? Do we have things bookmarked in our browsers in our email, in our project software or just any kind of an organizational software?
2:59 Could be notion, could be to-do list anything out there that kind of helps you track what you are doing. Is it clear when you're picking things back up that you know what to do next?
3:15 Now I really recommend, it's actually sounds counterintuitive, but it really works for me is like getting to a point when you're exiting that you know exactly what the next step is and it's a really easy next step, but actually stopping right before that because when you reenter it actually is really
3:37 easy to reenter. Now all of this is talking about transitions, right? It's readying our brain for diving back in. It's allowing our body to feel that we're getting ready to be in work mode or creation mode or having fun mode.
3:58 It, it doesn't really matter if it's actually a work or play, but it's these transitions between things and when you kind of set yourself up so that the reentry is a whole lot easier, it can make it more fun and just more useful in your life to see that, hey, I'm picking this back up and you know, that
4:24 thing that I have to do right off the bat. I know how to do that. I know what I'm doing.
4:29 And it sets your brain up to go, okay, the train is starting <laugh>, the train is cuz when you think about trains, they're really slow to stop and really hard to get going again.
4:41 And this is often how my brain feels. It's like, okay, come Monday morning I'm going to need to ease into this and ease into like picking up where I left off.
4:56 The other part of all of this is knowing that there's sometimes in life where if you go on vacation or if you are just taking a long break from something, when you are reentering that first day may not be productive.
5:13 That first day may be just gathering yourself and trying to line up what you're doing the next day. There's this whole kind of buffer day that happens where maybe you have to go grocery shopping, maybe you have to make some phone calls to set up future appointments.
5:33 Maybe there's all these things that kind of had to be put off until after the vacation that the, it may take up a whole entire day.
5:42 So when we look at reentering after long a longer period of time than just the weekend, I like to look at that Monday as like, okay, that's a whole day that I'm just like recouping and like getting back on track and that's okay.
6:00 Like I don't expect to have a bunch of work projects done that day, but I will get into them the following day on that Tuesday.
6:11 So how we buffer our time and how we leave things at one point to exit and then how we pick back things, pick up things back up when we reenter is really how we kind of help support ourselves in our kind of weekly tasks and even long-term goals.
6:35 We're practicing these habits of closing things down, having this exit and almost having this like, okay, I'm wrapping this up and it feels really good even though I might be in the middle of parts of it and then when I come back I know I can unwrap it and know where to go.
6:55 So I hope that helps. And thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space podcast.
