I’m a great believer in elevenses. When I was small my mother would always stop what she was doing on the dot of 11.00 and sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and a slice of the latest cake she had baked. I’d have a glass of milk and a slice of cake too. It was a little daily ritual that I’ve resurrected recently.
I’ve often stopped for tea breaks in my working life, but they have never had the ritual to them that elevenses has. Usually (when I was working full time) a tea break was something that was grabbed as and when there was time, and often taken while still working on something. The important thing about the true ritual of elevenses is that it is a moment to stop. Really stop.
The ritual of elevenses makes us stop and pace ourselves
Stopping and pacing is a vital thing to do in our working and creative lives. The punctuation to the day it provides is an opportunity to rest a little and reflect (or just to catch up with ourselves). Without such punctuation it is all too easy to loose track of ourselves, getting carried away on tangents of busyness that are both exhausting and unfocused.
A ten or fifteen minute break while you brew a pot of tea, slice a piece of cake and sit and slowly enjoy them, are a few minutes very well spent. If we’re challenged by energy issues then we can use this quite time to make sure we’ve been keeping ourselves on track with what we wanted to get done with today’s energy reserves, and if we’re off track to gently get ourselves back on track.
Why not create your own elevenses ritual with loose leaf tea and a teapot?
For me a midmorning cuppa, brewed with loose leaf tea in a my favourite little yellow teapot is just the thing. The extra time it takes to wait for the tea to infuse is just right for me to reflect a little on my day so far. Just how much time have I been distracted by the web, or Twitter! How much of my Important Work have I actually got done? I often find the twenty minutes of work I do after I’ve finished my elevenses is the most focused of my day!
Elsewhere
How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea over on The Delightful Repast
