Move the furniture

Last week I came across this entry on The Book Designer blog in which Joel Friedlander told of a man who rearranges his furniture every few weeks just because the frequent sense of change sharpens his creativity and his productivity. The blog writer, who was telling this story second-hand, used “rearranging the furniture” as a metaphor for changing things up and introducing new elements as a way of keeping the mind alert.

I had to smile as I read it because it rang so true to me. My life has generally not been characterized by a lot of major changes, particularly not in terms of physical setting: I’ve spent almost my entire life in the same state, and the majority of those years in the same town. And yet I can vouch for what a positive impact frequent small changes can have on a creative mindset. So many times, the most minor changes in my life have given me an unexpected and seemingly unwarranted sense of renewal. Two years ago, when I changed the time of my weekday run from early evening to afternoon, it seemed like a great idea and gave me new energy. “Afternoon must be a much better time for me to run, physiologically speaking,” I concluded. But then one year ago, circumstances caused me to change from an afternoon run to a morning run, and I had that same feeling of a new spring in my step. It probably doesn’t actually matter what time of day I run, from a physiological perspective: it’s just the change itself that is reinvigorating.

Almost twenty years ago, when I was a copy editor at the American Meteorological Society, the editorial director told us a story about an office in which several copy editors shared one large space. One day, electricians came in and replaced all the lighting with a different kind of bulb. Immediately the productivity of the copy editors increased measurably, so the department head concluded that the new lighting made it easier for them to see and enabled them to work faster. But then after a month or so, the electricians came back and put the old bulbs back in, and again the productivity increased. It turned out, of course, that neither kind of bulb was more conducive to the editors’ productivity; it was the change itself that put a spring in their step, metaphorically speaking.

I find it particularly invigorating when I can find some small way to make my regular practices a little bit easier. Last week I started backing my car into our garage rather than parking in toward the house. Because of my bad habit of being just a teeny bit behind schedule almost every time I leave the house, this change seems to make a tremendous difference in my outlook whenever I leave to go somewhere. The car is already facing the right way and I don’t have to back out? Fantastic! In reality, I’m probably saving myself all of about fifteen seconds, but that one tiny saved step brightens my outlook considerably.

The “move the furniture” blog reminded me again to find small ways to change what I’m doing: a minor alteration in routine, a new habit like leaving my purse by the door instead of by my desk, or, indeed, a trivial rearrangement of the furniture. Routine is fundamental, but small changes within those routines can be effective as well. And it’s always great to feel that little surge of renewed energy that comes from almost any kind of trivial change.

My business card, myself

A young woman I met at a memorial service earlier this week asked me how she could look up my blog. I gave her my business card, explaining as I did so that my blog domain name isn’t actually listed on the card, but the business card has my full name, which is the same as the domain name for my website, on which she can find a link to the blog.

Really, about half the information on my business card is wrong or incomplete. Yet even though every day in my email box I receive promotions for new business cards, I hold back on ordering. Why? Well, because I feel like something more could still change.

Of course, this is silly reasoning, because first of all, business cards are so cheap, and second, something already has changed. The cards I have are missing my website, missing my blog, and list an old email address that I’ve crossed out and rewritten (I do that in batches of about twenty as I transfer them from my desk to my wallet) but even the one I’ve penned in, though valid, is no longer my most professional email address.

And yet I don’t order new cards. The book I’m trying to see published could suddenly find a publisher, and then I’d want that information included on my card. Last week I lost my cell phone antenna piece and have ordered a replacement part, but it seems to be taking forever to arrive; there’s the possibility that I’ll lose patience and buy a new phone, and have to change my cell phone number as a result. Or I could suddenly submit to the lure of a fancier, “smarter” phone and need a new number. Or I could get a great head shot taken that I felt should be on my card. Or someone might offer to design me a logo.

On the one hand, I feel virtuous for trying so hard to use up my existing business cards before I order more. (Though really, does anyone ever actually use up business cards? I never have, not even in the job I held for eight years, and that was back in the days when professionals in the corporate realm still bothered to exchange business cards, rather than just using electronic contact methods the way they do now.) On the other, of all the things I feel guilty for disposing of – batteries, computer cords that have mysteriously stopped working, obsolete electronics – business cards, little 2x3 slips of stock paper, are surely the least of my worries. They’re recyclable. And we could probably use a lot of them around home. I can use them for bookmarks. (Oh wait, no I can’t. That’s changed too; my books are electronic now, and therefore so are my bookmarks.) My seven-year-old is famous for her scrap pile approach to craft projects, she has yet to find a throwaway item that she can’t turn into an art supply. She could probably build an entire paper village with my unwanted (and inaccurate) business cards.

Last week on NPR, I heard Gail Steketee, Boston University professor and author of a new book about compulsive hoarding, describing a woman who wouldn’t throw away an ATM receipt because on it she had written a few notes about purchases she’d made, and if she threw away the receipt, she told the researcher, she would lose that whole day. It would disappear from her personal history, she believed. I’m normally the opposite of a hoarder; I discard things with abandon, because I abhor household clutter and I figure there’s almost nothing short of family heirlooms that I can’t replace if it’s really necessary.

Business cards may be the one thing I hoard. But unlike the woman in the book, it’s not exactly that I fear losing the person I am on that card. (A person without a website or blog and with an email address that belongs to a now bankrupt internet service provider? Why would I care about losing that person?) It’s more a matter of not being quite sure of the person I might soon be. What if I do soon become a published author? Or a professional with a new logo? Or a member of Facebook? I’ll need that information on my business card. Shouldn’t I hold off on ordering them until all bets are in as far as what the future might hold?

Admittedly, I’m making too much of this. For a few dollars, I could order the cards and be done with it. But there’s something strangely reassuring about holding off. Maybe there’s information about myself I don’t yet know. An ordering address for my still-not-published book, for example. A phone number for my state-of-the-art new mobile phone that I don’t yet own. Who knows. It’s ridiculously trivial but it’s true: Without committing my coordinates to paper and ink, anything still seems possible.

Pedaling uphill

Our minister told a story from the pulpit over a year ago that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I consider it a parable; she referred to it as an “old joke,” which I would like to think suggests merely that it’s more meaningful to me than it is to her and not that I’m so simplistic that what constitutes a joke to other people is a symbolic morality tale to me, though I admit that it’s quite possible that’s true.

The story – whether joke or parable -- tells of two people riding a tandem bicycle up a steep hill. Not only is it difficult to make progress forward; the hill is so steep that they are in danger of sliding backwards. Finally they reach the top. The one in front says, “What a ride! My quads are burning up! I wasn’t sure we were going to make it!” The one in back says, “I know. I was so afraid of backsliding, I had the brakes on the whole time.”

My cyber-colleague Michele Dortch, who writes the Integrated Mother blog, posted on Twitter yesterday that her intention for the day was “to move with the flow of change & stop trying to work against its current,” and I asked her if she knew that parable. She didn’t, and I couldn’t boil it down to Twitter’s requisite 140 characters, so I promised her I would tell it in today’s blog post.

It’s a story that means a lot to me. As I often say, I’m someone who loves routine – both actual routines and the whole idea of doing something in a diurnal or otherwise regularly scheduled fashion – and, by extension, I don’t always embrace change.

Several years ago, my friend Nancy invited our family over for dinner on Labor Day, which in our town is also usually the eve of the new school year. “Oh, that’s a great idea,” I said eagerly. “And if it works out well, then next year we’ll invite your family for a Labor Day, first-day-of-school-eve dinner.”

Nancy is too clear-eyed and practical to put up with me sometimes. “I’m inviting you for a dinner, not the launch of a new tradition,” she said bluntly.

But to me, it sounded like the perfect way to launch a tradition. So the next year we did invite them, and then they invited us again, and I thought we were on to something wonderful until the year after that, when the school calendar changed and school started for the first time the week before Labor Day. I called Nancy, full of anxiety, as soon as I found out. “It’s our turn to host, but I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “Which night do you want to come over? Is our tradition a Labor Day dinner, or a first-day-of-school-eve dinner, now that they’re not one and the same?”

So yes, I do love traditions, and that’s okay. Not being one to embrace change isn’t always bad either – until you become the person putting the brakes on the bike as someone else struggles to ride it uphill. Every now and then I stop and look at a decision I’m making or an action I’m taking and ask myself that question: “In doing this, are you the one keeping the bike from reaching the crest of the hill? Is your tendency to avoid change really more like an inability to recognize the possibility for progress?”

Sometimes, yes. I try to keep that parable in mind, because it’s a story so relevant to my life and, often, to my faults. Working against the current can be challenging but ultimately productive: just ask a salmon. Keeping a bike from being able to pedal, not so productive. Yes, it’s just a parable – or, to a more sophisticated thinker, an old joke. But to me it’s tremendously informative, and a really useful image to keep in my sights.

Change it up

I write often about how strong my affinity for routine is. I like diurnal rituals, yearly traditions, seasonal rites. My attraction to daily practices is one thing that makes it relatively easy for me to carry out a resolution to run a mile or more every day of the year – a resolution I’ve held now for two years and nine months. Writing one thousand words in my journal is another daily practice that my love of maintaining habits makes it easy for me to stick with.

But even for me – okay, probably especially for me – it’s good to shake up the usual once in a while. Ever since the school year started in September, I’ve been taking my daily run on weekdays at about 11 AM, after spending two hours at my desk. In many ways, it’s an ideal time to go: I’ve made some headway into the day’s writing assignments or other work-related tasks, the sun is high and warm (which in New England is an advantage all but about two months out of the year, when I’m better off waiting for the cooler hours close to dusk), it renews my mental energy for another three or four hours of work when I return from the run, and traffic on the roadways is at a minimum.

But for the past two days I’ve done something different and run right after my seven-year-old climbs onto the school bus. The first time it was because I had a late-morning appointment that would interfere with my usual run, but the second time I just decided there were advantages to this new schedule. There was a sense of energetic continuity in taking Holly out to the bus stop and then just launching right from there, as if Holly and I were both soaring into the crux of our day at the same time. There were loads of people to wave to in passing cars, since I run past the school and so many of my friends drive their kids up to campus in the morning. I even passed a couple of people I knew along the footpath as I ran by; they had parked their cars up at school after dropping their kids off and were taking their dogs for a walk.

I also found that the sense of having my whole work day still ahead of me once I returned home was very motivating. Sometimes when I leave for a run in the late morning, it feels like an interruption; other times when I get back I feel like the day is practically over, even with nearly three hours left before the kids get home from school. Yesterday I really appreciated the feeling at nine o’clock that my run was over and I had almost six hours of uninterrupted desk time ahead. It gave me a good sense of immersion into my work.

Still, I know if I followed that schedule every day, I’d need a break from it. Any regular schedule is good to alter once in a while. When I worked at the American Meteorological Society, one of the scientists described a study in which the light bulbs in the office that housed a group of clerical workers were changed in some small way. The clerical workers’ productivity increased by a measurable amount after that, proving—the researchers thought—that the new light bulbs created a better working environment. But then six months later they changed the light bulbs back to the original ones, and again there was a rise in productivity. It turned out it was the change, and not the bulbs, that energized the workers.

I remind myself of that whenever I get too set in any work or household routine. Running in the late morning is great, but I’m glad I discovered the benefits of running first thing once in a while. I try to read a different newspaper some mornings. I do my work in a different order sometimes.

For some people, routine is never an option: due to the nature of their work or the hardships of their lives, change, as the expression goes, is the only constant. For those of us like me who are fortunate enough to have quite a lot of control over our daily environment, a small shift in our micro-universe is a positive thing, even when we have to push ourselves into it.