Ritual

No no no, I know I'm a granddaughter of Satan, but this is not that kind of ritual, geez, why do people's mind always go to this kind of thing the moment a hellspawn is involved.

*coughs*

With this out of the way... A ritual is a bit of a necessity for me... Or rather, as far as I know, not for me, but for many people. In particular... Anyone that works at home.

When I say ritual, I mean something that tells you that you are no longer at home relaxing, and is now at your work environment, and now you should focus on work and not get distracted by everything else you would usually do when in front of a computer with stable internet connection.

You see... The problem of working at home, is that nobody is there to put pressure on you, to put the pressure on your to force you to work, you need discipline, you need to say "I will work today" and actually work when nothing will happen if you don't work... It's pretty hard, because even though we know we need to work to earn money, the temptation of slacking of is way too high.

And that is where the ritual comes in, it's not the whole of it, but a part of it... It's something to tell you that you are now in a work environment, it's important, but the one that will make this environment be productive, and force yourself to work, is just... You. You and you alone.

Still, even if a ritual doesn't do the whole job for you, it does a lot of it, it's really a LOT easier to work right after you finish your ritual than if you just say: "I'll work now."

Well... But what is a ritual then? Honestly? It can be anything.

For some people, it's as simple as sitting in another chair in the room.
For my uncle, it was dressing up in a suit, and walking a corridor on his house that led to an isolated room.
For me, it's a game of Freecell, accompanied by a single song.

I think mine is the craziest one of them, it's a match of a game, it's something that should distract me, and it doesn't even have a fixed duration... It's a weird ritual, but... You see... I played a LOT of Freecell.

I think I have (over multiple devices, so I'm not really sure on the number) over 10000 matches already... Either that or over 4000, I don't know if my old PC had 700 or 7000 matches on it... Well, it doesn't really matter.

The thing is, I usually complete a match in around 2 minutes, it's really uncommon for it to pass 3 minutes, so the time is more or less fixed... And... It's relaxing, I don't need to struggle with a match... Rather, all of my matches are self-challenges to put the aces in the order of spades>TheOtherBlackOneIForgotTheName>ThatOtherRedOneIAlsoForgotTheName>Hearts. I always do it in that order for as long as possible, and this still doesn't make the match pass 3 minutes, and it doesn't get me any worried about the game... It's really... Relaxing.

It's a relaxing ritual before I start. Sets my mind in place... It's surprising how much this helps me, back when I worked on my university's PC, it was a lot harder for me to actually start, because... There was no Freecell there for me to play. Freecell has always been one of the first things I go to when I want to procrastinate, because it's too fast, it's just "one more match", it's only 2 or 3 minutes, surely it won't hurt... And well, it really doesn't. I just made it from a method of procrastination to a ritual to start working.

If I don't have Freecell, my best other bet would be... "Let me just check my alerts"... But alerts are bad, because by the time I finished them, more appear, it's a never-ending cycle... It's terrible as a ritual, it takes too long, it is a cyclical thing, and they drag me in whole.

Freecell works way better, I use it whenever I take a break too, or whenever I go eat or... Whatever, whenever I start working, I play a match of Freecell right before it, it works really well.

In particular, last Saturday, when I absolutely felt like not working, I think I played some 10 or 15 matches of Freecell in-between work... But hey, it actually worked, I started working after each of them, even if it only lasted me some 5 minutes, 5 minutes of work for 2 minutes of break is a terrible relation, but much better than 1h of procrastination and 0 minutes of work~

Rituals are pretty important for anyone working at home... If you end up in this kind of situation, you'd better make one for you, something that works for you, just make sure it's something that will actually work... As in, something that doesn't distract you excessively or the like.