Falling in love with the ordinary: the Zen of Materials Management

The work that we do in Materials Management (aka, circulation, back of the house, or as we like to call it, “the heart of the library” is repetitive and detail-oriented. If you could maintain your focus through a morning’s check-ins, you’d be a Zen master! This isn’t a realistic expectation, but can you catch your thoughts when they’re wandering, and return your focus to the work at hand?

It helps if you can find joy in the work that you do. It’s pretty wondrous to have hundreds of books and DVDs pass through your hands any given day! Well, that itself can be distracting! What tools can we use to help train our attention? The first thing that comes to my mind is a quote, from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Mindfulness helps us to fall in love with the ordinary.” Can we begin to see the mundane as extraordinary?

A while back I installed a Google Chrome Extension “bell of mindfulness” to my Chrome account. There is a chime you can set according to your preferences (e.g. every 15 minutes or once an hour). When I hear the signal, I take a breath, in and out, and then resume working, giving the task at hand my full attention.

What at your library can you fall in love with?