Personal Development

Desktop Vacation Benefits

At Your Desk: Playground, Vacation, or Sanctuary

Long, stressful days demand brief interludes of calm or play. To pace yourself, to control your stress level, to keep your genius at work, you need to carve out mini-breaks in your work day.

We are not talking here about taking a ten-minute coffee break or a brisk walk on the deck. We are talking about those 10-second to 1 minute oasis of relief from the interminable focus and concentration that your work requires of you.

Wellness experts suggest that you find ways to initiate these interludes by importing items to your desktop or office environs that serve to break your concentration and restore your perspective and balance.

You've seen wind-up toys on another lawyer's desk. Or vacation post cards tacked to a computer. Anything non-toxic that makes you stop and smile or even laugh will improve your health and well-being. These are the building blocks for a formal mini-break.

Desktop Vacation
A mini-vacation is a small area of your desktop containing mementos of one of your favorite vacation spots - whether you've ever been there or not. There are some people who don't take the vacations they should: I gave a friend a "fisherman's mini-vacation" kit with miniature souvenirs of a fishing trip and little plastic fish. At least I know he will take the time to think about it - to imagine himself on a vacation of his dreams.

Desktop Playground
A g-rated adult playground for the desktop might include a few crayons, a colourful notepad, a wind-up toy, a puzzle, bubble-making gunk, some marbles or a ball and jacks and so on. Stick it all in a conservative leather or wooden box and nobody has to know it is there for your time-out pleasures. As a client-gift, I made a desktop playground from the legal book boxes at Law Courts Center (legal volumes hollowed out in their center to provide storage). Now a lawyer in Vancouver, with volume of the BC Statutes at his desk, is hiding his playground in plain sight.

Spirituality at Work
Pat McHenry Sullivan of Visionary Resources is a pastoral counselor in the San Francisco Bay Area involved in the spirituality at work movement. Pat Sullivan's has two books forthcoming this fall: Work with Meaning, Work with Joy and Sometimes a Job Needs a Good Blessing, a compilation of Pat's 25 Vision and Values columns that were published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Hearst Examiner between 1999 and 2001. Visit her site at www.visionary-resources.com (don't forget the dash or you'll be visiting a psychic!)

Desktop Retreat
Pat's version of a desktop break is the Two-Minute Retreat in which you use your imagination to explore new frontiers or to daydream your way to the top. This is just one of the ideas she shares in a workshop called "Spirit Breaks and Stressbusters".

A lawyer in Washington shared with me the environment she developed for her mini-retreats. She has a water fountain, a cd player, and aromatherapy candles on the bureau behind her desk. Whenever she has achieved a victory in court, she permits herself a mini-break at her desk with all the accouterments of the best spas.

Desktop Sanctuary
A Desktop Sanctuary is a site or collection of items that provides a positive experience for you-whether it provides spa moment, an occasion for meditation, an occasion for spiritual reflection, or a sense of your self for grounding and recharging your batteries.

Pat Sullivan has observed a similar phenomenon over the 30 years she has worked in law firms. She calls these Workplace Alters. These are collections of personal memorabilia and photos that people keep at their desks. Years ago these would be tucked away in a desk drawer but, for whatever reasons, they now boldly occupy desktops or bulletin boards.

If you want to formalize your own collection consider Pat's concept of two types: Personal Archaelogy and Everyday Visionquesting

• Personal Archaelogy: Recover your imagination, and a strong sense of purpose, and reconnect with your intuition by collecting natural treasures or personal symbols that you may have lost touch with.
• Everyday Visionquesting. Receive inspiration and direction in the midst of your daily life and work with symbolic representations of your personal journey in life. Turn stress and chaos in your work life into insight and energy with a focus on your own vision of the future.

So with a few of my ideas and these of Pat's, set about creating your own Desktop Escape this summer while the boss is on vacation!