Breaks, Milestones and Optimism
Relentless is a word I have heard a lot this week.
So many leaders and CEOs are really feeling the relentlessness of the current situation: continued pressure; little prospect of improvement in the short to medium term; and very little to grab hold of in terms of positive news. Even for those whose organisations are doing OK, the relentlessness of the situation on a personal level can be equally hard to deal with.
Let’s look at three key things that can help.
Breaks
Back in the early 2000s a respected sports psychologist, Jim Loehr, wanted to understand what it was that differentiated the small number of world-class tennis players who consistently won trophies, from the hundreds of other players on the tour. What made the difference for these athletes in the top tier? What were the habits that enabled consistent excellent performances under intense competitive pressure?
Jim performed all sorts of analysis. But to his growing frustration, he couldn’t find any consistent differences amongst the best players.
Until he looked at what they did between points. And a pattern jumped out immediately. The top players demonstrated very similar habits when they returned to the baseline after scoring and when they changed ends. These habits were distinct to the winners. By putting heart rate monitors on the top players, Jim found that they were able to bring their heart rates down to an ideal zone more efficiently than less successful competitors. So what is it they did? They displayed a series of rejuvenating behaviours in the sixteen to twenty seconds between points, and the 90 seconds between games, which enabled them to release tension, project a confident image to their opponents, and establish rituals to increase consistency.
This is the reason you now see pretty much every player turn their back on the court, use their towel, and repeatedly bounce the call before their next serve.
Incredible isn’t it? That something so seemingly small can have such a huge impact.
So what can you build into your day? What micro-breaks can you develop, and create habits around, to give you the opportunity to settle, press re-set, and then start again? Tactics I have come across in the workplace include:
2 minute meditation (especially for those who are experienced at it);
5 minutes listening to a mindfulness app;
shutting your door/finding a comfy sofa and turning your phone off for 5 minutes at some point during your day;
booking in 45 minute zoom/teams calls rather than 60 minutes, and giving yourself a 15 minute break between each one; and
engineering a short walk (for example by going the long way to the bathroom/kitchen), and thereby combining the benefits of physical activity with the short switch off time.
Milestones
Two of my favourite authors, Dan and Chip Heath, have written a book called The Power of Moments. In the book, they explore why certain brief experiences can jolt, elevate and change us, and explain how to create powerful moments in our own life and work. Much of the research centres around milestones – those moments in life that you work towards, and look forward to, and then celebrate. Whilst so many ‘life’ milestones are inevitably being missed at the moment, it is possible to create your own powerful work milestones on a regular basis, in order to remain motivated. Think about the cycle of the week, and how we all tend to work towards achieving certain things before the end of the week, so we can ‘celebrate’ and appreciate our achievements over the weekend, before we start all over again. If you are feeling tired, if you are feeling below par, if you are feeling like you’re not sure where you determination and persistence are going to come from, why not build in more milestones for yourself during the week?
Optimism
There is a huge body of research around the benefits of taking an optimistic approach. Whilst there is an element of innate character here, much work can also be done in terms of how you frame events, and how you choose to approach things. One of my favourite pieces of research in this area relates to a group of nuns. Nuns are pretty ideal as a research group because most of the variables are removed; in this instance all had the same diet, access to health care, similar beliefs and same lifestyle.
When this particular group of nuns entered into the service, they all had to write a letter outlining why they wanted to become nuns. Some wrote about their calling to serve, their belief and their duty. At the other end of the scale were those who wrote about how lucky and excited they were to have this opportunity and how they were looking forward to being nuns. So we have ‘duty’ nuns and ‘fun’ nuns. Decades later, researchers looked at how the nuns were doing. By age 85, 90% of the fun nuns were still alive compared to just 34 % of the duty nuns. By age 94, 54% of the fun nuns were still enjoying life, whilst 11% of the duty nuns were hanging on….
What about the impact of an optimistic approach to how things will turn out? Can you ‘force’ positive things to happen by stating and repeating them? One of the most famous examples of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ – a prediction that causes itself to be true - comes from sport, and the experience of the Lakers and their achievement in 1988 in becoming the first team since 1969 to win the NBA championship twice in a row. Their head coach, Pat Riley, was approached by a reporter in the midst of the 1987 Championship celebrations, and asked if the Lakers could repeat their win the following year. Riley replied “I guarantee it.” With those three words (which he repeated to the astonished journalist) Riley promised the journalists, players and millions and fans a second championship. As Magic Johnson said in an interview in 1987: “of all the psychological things that Pat’s come up with, this is probably the best.”
This is not to claim that this was the sole reason for their success. But it is a strong example of an optimistic belief driving the behaviours and attitudes that then lead to success.
So in these challenging and somewhat relentless times, if you can find time for those short micro-breaks on a daily basis; if you can try and develop your own milestones; and if you can try and take a positive and optimistic approach, it might help you to continue to work hard and flourish despite the current conditions. After all, as leaders, your approach and well-being has a massive impact on those you lead.