10 Weeks of Winter

Freezing…

While the winter dark may have already arrived in the northern hemisphere, the season of winter has yet to begin. As mid-December approaches northern places grow wetter and colder, and eventually most are either intermittently or completely beset with ice and snow. The transition of fall into winter is one of freezing. The natural world cues up the living creatures that populate the north for the transition to winter freeze. Most beings go dormant or hibernate. The agenda is to hunker down, conserve energy, stay warm enough to stay alive until the snow has passed. A few other critters opt for other antifreeze adaptations. The artic fox trades it’s dark summer coat for a snowy white one perfect for hunting through the frozen winter. The snowshoe hare is yet another mammal that trades tawny for white fur camo. Instead of bulking up stored calories and hibernating, these animals actively roam the snowy plains and forests of the northern winter regions successfully enough to endure the forbidding temperatures and storms, find food, and last until spring returns.

Transitions occur for creatures great and small across centuries, decades, seasons, and days. We are, all of us, caught up in movement through cycles of time. Many of the transitions we encounter from day to day are not observed or consciously thought about. Like the artic fox or snowshoe hare changing color, our biorhythms cue us up to move naturally between states. Our circadian rhythms tells us when to be sleepy and when to wake up. Our digestive processes tell us when to be hungry. Some people are quite adept at telling the time of day just based on how they feel. I own a pair of little guinea pigs. Every day around 5 PM I give them a hay-based vitamin C cookie. They love them! And I never forget to give them those cookies because right before 5 PM they start squeaking at me, “wheek, wheek, wheek, wheek” (translation: “time for my cookie now”). They know what time it is. And for the most part so do we.

Go with the flow…

Understanding and embracing our biological processes and compulsions can be incredibly useful for building desirable habits and optimizing our experiences and performance (i.e., make things easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable). Many artists and writers (and thinkers, programmers, scientists, etc.) long for the experience of the “flow state”, where ideas and execution of skills flow naturally and with ease. While it’s never recommended to depend on the flow state to get work done, it is possible to trigger the flow state more regularly using intentional or deliberate transitions.

Think about how our bodies are adapted to following environmental cues, like light levels, to induce tiredness or wakefulness. Similarly we can influence our minds to focus on particular tasks, switch between tasks and activities, compartmentalize, etc. If you read articles about how to create a writing space, you’ll probably encounter the concept of the “third space” – the non-home, non-work space where you can write without distraction. Among the third space suggests you’ll often find the idea of a writing space in a box. This is for people who may not have a spare room, or access to a café or library. Effectively the writing space in a box is where you place items that you use only for writing inside a container, and to create that third space you pull them out and set up an area with things that you only use or look at when doing your writing — and of course putting them away when the writing is done so as not to muddle the trigger or transition to the third space. This is a deliberate transition.

Simple transitions…

Intentionally employing transitions can be a powerful tool for productivity and creativity, and they don’t have to be complex. Recently I’ve been learning to play guitar. Before I start practicing I usually light a candle. I almost never light a candle for any other purpose, and this is an important point. The signal of transition needs to be connected only to the activity, habit, or behavior for which you’re using the transition signal, otherwise it doesn’t work well because your brain will connect it with too many other things. For me lighting the candle is connected with playing guitar. It puts me in the mood to play and helps unburden my mind of other thoughts. As long as it burns the candle creates a kind of separate space that’s just for guitar practice.

I use other types of transitions or signals of transition as well. To get myself in the mood to work on particular writing projects I use music playlists that I only listen to when writing on that project. When trying to get myself to workout when I don’t want to, I don’t even ask myself to do the workout, I just ask myself to put on my shoes. That’s it. And 99 times out of 100 the workout will just happen from there. The shoes on my feet create the transition in my mind and the barrier to working out fades away.

For my 10 Weeks of Winter project I’m thinking about trying to identify and use some transitions. The hardest part for me is keeping to a schedule with the protocols I’m using to help revitalize my enjoyment of winter. Maybe I’ll use some custom alarm tones that are pleasant to signal breathing exercises (maybe a gong sound, I like that idea) and maybe a separate tone for red light therapy. Otherwise the protocols are getting mixed about into my day and followed through at irregular times sort of haphazardly. I wrote about trains this week. Maybe something to do with the sounds of trains or maybe using one of the training journey videos I can bring in some transition cues to follow through more regularly on my 10 Weeks of Winter protocols.

Transitions are an interesting concept to work with and they can be rather rewarding once you catch onto the idea. I hope you give them a try.