Memorandum on Work Mug Residency
The mug has been there since March. It has become the desk. The desk does not exist without it.
Search: "best mug for work from home"
Search: "how to make home office feel more professional"
Search: "work desk setup productivity"
The searches occurred in March 2020. They are relevant in February 2021 because one of their outcomes is still on the desk.
The subject selected a mug in March 2020. Not a new mug. A mug that had been in the cabinet for two years and had not been used because it was large and heavy and suited for mornings when sitting still was the plan. The work-from-home mornings were mornings when sitting still was the plan. The mug was assigned.
It has not been reassigned.
Search: "how many coffees per day is too many"
Search: "does caffeine after 2pm affect sleep"
The mug is central to the work setup in a way that resists explanation when the subject attempts to explain it. The mug is large. It holds enough that refilling it twice is sufficient for a full workday. It sits to the right of the keyboard. It has sat to the right of the keyboard for eleven months.
The home setup is meant to simplify work, but every boundary requires another ritual. The mug is the ritual that signals that work has begun. This was not designed. It was discovered retrospectively when the subject once started working without the mug and found the session difficult to account for.
Search: "is it normal to have rituals when working from home"
Work mug residency first consumed a few seconds that nobody considered worth discussing. Those seconds acquired a preferred sequence: mug filled before computer opened, not after. The preference was discovered when it was violated once.
The routine eventually required its own exception policy for the days when the mug was in the dishwasher. On those days, a smaller mug was used. The smaller mug was described as inadequate. The inadequacy was felt as real and not as a cognitive artifact of expectation.
Search: "why do habits feel weird when broken"
An inconvenient ritual becomes official when stopping it would require a new decision. Nobody has asked the subject to stop using the work mug. The subject has not considered stopping. The decision that would be required to stop has not been identified, because identifying it would require acknowledging that the mug is not simply a mug.
The mug is still on the desk.