Energy Management: Start and Stop Rituals
In This Episode
Feeling like the lines between work and home are blurring? Do you find yourself working extra hours at night or on weekends? Learn about the tool of start and stop rituals on this episode of The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning.
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien: Hello, and welcome to the LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Leaning. I'm your host and LifeLab leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills — the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. On this episode of the leader lab, we're continuing the conversation on energy management and what we can do to avoid burnout. If you've been listening for the past few episodes you know the definition by now, but to equal the playing field, I'll remind you once more.
Vanessa Tanicien: So burnout are those feelings of disengagement, physical exhaustion, and just general negativity. And if you're feeling on the edge, we're here to equip you with just one more tool to help you keep burnout at bay. Back in the lab today is Roi Ben-Yehuda, who is our resident negotiation expert at life labs. And a father of two and husband of one who is currently learning how to speak Chinese. Roi, we're thrilled to have you back at the lab. What tool have you got for us to manage our energy with this time around?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: A pleasure to be back here Vanessa. The tool that I want to share with our listeners today is what we call a start and stop ritual. And what that is some repetitive action that ushers you in and out of a work mode.
Vanessa Tanicien: So I'm curious, how does this help us manage our energy?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Well, I think we have to first understand what is the source of the problem? And then we'll come back to that particular point. So as I see it, one of the biggest problems that we are facing today is we've transitioned to remote work. It's not that we brought our work home with us. It is that we're now living at work. And what that means is that our brain is constantly fusing our work life and our personal life together. And all these cues in our environment are reminding us that we need to be working. So whether it is I'm working on my bed, I'm working on the couch, I'm working in the kitchen, I'm working in the bathroom. Do you know how many workshops I gave in the bathroom last week? None, but I gave a lot of them. And so the point is we're constantly on, there's no off-switch. And that means that we're working and we're working and we're working and we run the risk of running out as you mentioned in the beginning.
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. It reminds me of two specific pieces of research that I've run across. One is that when people end up over working at home, it's usually about a four hour weekly increase, which clearly directly impacts a person's susceptibility to burnout. And the fact that there's no longer the segmentation that we have from going into work, being work offs, and then coming back home and being home offs. It's all integrated now. So I can imagine how the bathroom can also feel like a boardroom for you, right?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Yeah. Yeah. If you don't mind, I want to share a few of the rituals that I do. So one of them that I really love is it's so simple. I just start my day with writing down my most important tasks. What are my top three most important tasks, I write them down physically on a sticky note. And then at the end of the day, I have the joy of seeing them go to the trash can, in a real trash can. And that's how I know, that's how my brain knows. You got to turn it off and you got to switch into another mode.
Vanessa Tanicien: So it's like a routine that you do every day to tell your brain we're done.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: It's similar to routine, but there's a crucial difference. Routine is a repeated behavior that's mindless. When I would wake up in the morning and I just check my phone out of habit, that's a routine. A ritual, on the other hand, is a deliberate symbolic action that I take to move me from one state of being into another. It's a big difference from that perspective.
Vanessa Tanicien: So you're telling me that the intentionality overall matters. How do we know that rituals actually make a difference?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Well, there's some research that shows us that rituals can help us regulate our emotion and can help us improve our performances and redirect our attention. One study that comes to mind was done by Alison Wood Brooks and her colleagues a few years ago in which they had some poor unsuspecting graduate students volunteer to engage in a task that produces a high level of anxiety. One of those examples was singing in public. And I think the song that they selected was, Journey's Don't Stop Believin'.
Vanessa Tanicien: That reminds me of my college days.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Do you remember it? You want to sing it?
Vanessa Tanicien: I mean, that is already increasing my anxiety. So how about we move on?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: All right. Well, in this particular study they divided the participants into three different groups. You had people in a control group who did nothing prior to the singing. Then people who did some random acts prior to the singing. Then you had people who did some ritual. You had them do something like draw their emotions on a piece of paper and then throw it in the trash right before the performance. And what they saw is that those who did perform the ritual prior to their performance, did significantly better in the performance itself and also had lower rates of anxiety prior to the performance. And so, when they measured that through self reports and also through physiological signs like their heart rate.
Vanessa Tanicien: That is such a clear link to energy management. This idea of lower anxiety means that we're in a place of calm. Which for me anyway, is a pretty energy increasing state. When I can feel that my body is not betraying me by my heart beating out of my chest or anything like that. So I'm curious what other types of start stop rituals are out there? I'm sure our listeners are curious about a couple of ideas.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Yeah. So we did an informal survey at LifeLabs, and there were a few of them that stood out for me that our folks are doing. And they go from simple to complex. So something as simple as turning on a certain light and turning off a certain light and thinking about this symbolic value of doing something like this, or turning on and off your computer, our co-CEO calls it the lid ritual. And so for some other folks, they actually coordinate activity with other people and they do a virtual workout before or after they engage in work. And so there's just a whole host of things that people do and find very helpful in managing their energy throughout the day.
Vanessa Tanicien: It seems like a lot of these are done alone. What can be done on a team wide aspect? Managing people or leading people — what can we do in that realm?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: At LifeLabs, we have a few of these rituals. One of them is in our all-hands meeting, we start every meeting with a gong and we end it with a gong. So we bookend our meeting to create that shift in consciousness, going from this non-meeting state to this meeting state and out of the state again. Kind of a separation initiation and a return. And there are others. I mean, that's kind of a silly ritual, but there's some very serious ones as well.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: So there's a group in the Beth Israel Medical Center surgical team that does something that really warms my heart (no pun intended). Prior to going into an operation, they would go through the standard best practice of a checklist, which in and of itself is a start ritual. Add one more thing to it though. And that is right before they begin to operate on this person, they would have the circulating nurse read something or say something about the person, individuate the person, humanize the person himself. This person is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. There's a moment of silence in thinking about the person they're about to cut open. That's a very powerful start ritual. So leaders, you want to be thinking about how you can help your team design an effective ritual of that nature.
Vanessa Tanicien: So it sounds like start and stop rituals can be pretty much anything. I mean, they can be from really silly to more serious and important. How do we go about creating one? A meaningful start or stop ritual?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Yeah, I think in creating one, there are two questions that you want to keep in mind. The first is what is your intention in designing this particular ritual for you and all your team? And the second is what is the action that's going to take place, in the beginning and in the end. So Vanessa, would you care to try this out, live on air with our listeners?
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. Yeah, let's do it.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Let's do it. All right. So what is your intention in creating a start/stop ritual?
Vanessa Tanicien: So I think personally for me a sense of calm. I think right now it's so easy for me to be reactive and frazzled, which if anyone has felt that way can make burnout a real possibility. So calm is a big thing for me.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: So to get to that place of inner peace, that place of calm, of tranquility in your day to day. Yes?
Vanessa Tanicien: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Roi Ben-Yehuda: All right. The second is what actions do you think are going to get you there? They're going to initiate it in the first place and they will allow you to transition to the next phase of your day. Also, with that level of equanimity, that level of calmness.
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. There's a couple things that I think might be useful here. From meditation to a quick walk around the block. But what's really calling my name right now is a nice hot cup of tea. We're getting into the winter months and it's also just good for the body. So I think that's also kind of an easy lift to do regardless of how I'm feeling.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Okay. And do you have a set place and time where you drink that tea?
Vanessa Tanicien: Well, I can now. So in the morning I could do it before I open my laptop lid. And then it's the first thing that I do after I close my laptop lid.
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Beautiful. All right. So there you have it. Sounds like a fantastic start stop ritual to help you manage your energy and be kind to your mind and body.
Vanessa Tanicien: So there you have it — a way to create, start and stop rituals instead of mindless routines. So that way you can better manage your energy and be kind to both your body and mind. That brings us to our LeaderLab listener experiment! Roi, what should people be doing in their laboratories of life?
Roi Ben-Yehuda: Well, Vanessa, I think they should follow your cue and design and or optimize their own start, stop rituals. It's very, very simple. You're just answering two questions. It means asking one, what is my intention in creating this ritual? And two, what action am I going to take? Action. That's going to initiate it and action that's going to usher me into the next phase of my day.
Vanessa Tanicien: And that's a wrap of another episode of the LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person, so we can all benefit from better energy management. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn in or on Twitter at LifeLabs, learn and to bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the lab next time.
