Wellbeing at work: a day at the desk and in the garden

Hi, my name is Claire and I’m the Development Manager for the Council for British Archaeology. My role mainly focuses on the CBA’s event programming across the year including project managing the Festival of Archaeology. I work remotely as I’m based in Fife, Scotland and so most of my days are spent at my desk with lots of online meetings to keep in touch with colleagues and delivery partners.

As our theme for this year’s Festival is Archaeology and Wellbeing I thought I’d focus my blog on an average day at my desk and what I get up to and how I look after my wellbeing when I’m on screen for around 8 hours a day.

Today, my day starts with a big cup of coffee, a bigger glass of water and a few minutes outside in the sunshine before heading to my desk to catch up on emails and download reports from our This Is Archaeology lecture last night. Next up is a Steering Group meeting for our current Reconnecting Archaeology project and its great to catch up with everyone, hear all the progress updates and share how we’re getting on with some of the elements I’m leading on including our Out and About Archaeology mini-festival that took place in May and in particular the new Archaeology Explore platform we’ve developed to share free to access guided walks that you can do online or out in the landscape.

After a couple of hours sitting down and online it’s time for a break so it’s time for a screen break. I make some tea, top up on water and do a few chores around the house to get me moving. Then it’s back to my desk to do some prep for A Day In Archaeology, checking everything is ready for the day, making some updates to the webpages and looking at some of the blogs that have been submitted. Then it’s a look at the new online gallery for the My Heritage project. It’s a fantastic project that brought together a group of young photographers to explore archaeology through creative practice. They have produced some incredible artwork and I’m looking forward to meeting some of the participants and seeing their exhibition in person at our Festival closing event at Cliffe Castle in Keighley this weekend.

Time for another break, this time for lunch and a quick walk up the road to get some more fresh air and movement in. Finding time to be outside and in nature makes such a difference to my wellbeing and I try to get outside every day even if it’s just for a few minutes. I’m terrible at remembering to do it though and generally end up getting engrossed in whatever I’m working on and completely losing track of time. To help me I use an app called Finch which gamifies self-care actions you can build into your day and helps you to build new habits. Over lunch I tick off two of today’s goals – take a walk and eat lunch away from my desk 😊

This afternoon I’m helping out with the Student and Early Careers Conference we deliver each year with the CIfA Early Career Special Interest Group. It’s always great to be involved with and this year we had another line up of amazing speakers. After my supporting slot is finished. I have another quick break to pick some veg from the garden ready for tonight’s dinner – potatoes, courgette, peas, plus some cherry tomatoes which make the perfect afternoon snack!

After that it’s back to emails and then a bit of focused work editing a new digital map I’m putting together to share an activity called Places of Memory and Meaning. Over the last two years we have been taking a map to all of our in-person events and asking people to share stories of a place that has meaning to them. I’m now in the process of uploading the 500+ places and developing a mechanism for people to add to the map digitally so we keep capturing responses and start to add in some photos as well. Keep an eye on the website as I hope we’ll be able to share this in the autumn.

My last task of the day is to prep my task list for tomorrow so I have a clear plan and have brain dumped everything that has come up during the course of the day.

At 6pm it’s time to finish and to help me switch off from work I’ll try and do something totally different. That might be another walk, some yoga, or just half an hour with a cup of tea and a good book. Tonight, I’m trying out a new resource we released for our Festival of Archaeology Theme Day. A Mindful Museum of You is a short, guided meditation by Chris Jeavons from the University of Leicester and it’s a great way to take a step back from all the business of the day, plus the video includes an axolotl and who doesn’t love that! I definitely recommend you give a try.

It's been a busy day and while the small steps I’ve incorporated might not seem like a lot, all of the little steps soon add up and make a huge difference. Without trying too hard I’ve hit the four of the five ways to wellbeing – connect, learn, get active, take notice.

Time to switch off the laptop now and pop round to the neighbours to share the courgette glut, meeting the last of the five ways to wellbeing – give.