CHAPTER THREE

The Power of Process

Reboot Your Personal Operating System

I met Thomas, a marketing leader, when his enthusiasm for his job was at an all-time high. He loved his work and the entrepreneurial spirit of his company, and he was very excited by its rapid growth and transformation. A passionate, visionary, and creative leader, Thomas brought an informal style to the role that colleagues loved; one of his strengths was being able to connect with others in a fluid and personable way. His shoot-from-the-hip approach and bias to action were a big part of the company’s success to date.

Thomas’s concern was that he didn’t want to stall out as he had seen happen to other leaders who weren’t able to scale their capacity and abilities when their companies scaled. He really wanted to keep up, but during this period of rapid transformation, he already felt pulled and stretched in many directions, and he feared he was slipping out of Leader A mode.

While Thomas thrived under high-pressure, competitive situations, he was starting to experience the downsides of the Just Do It Now Pitfall as the sheer volume, pace, and intensity of his role grew. He felt like he was rushing from one meeting to the next, without having time to work on the things that mattered most. Digital marketing, big data, and the increasing number of platforms to reach customers were changing his industry and company quickly, and the executive team was anxious to make sure the company was keeping up with trends in marketing analytics and data. This added even more pressure.

Thomas was able to keep pace on both the day-to-day work and the larger projects that mattered most to the company’s growth—but sometimes just barely, and he felt increasingly drained and less present. Some of his team members had even expressed concern about how on edge he seemed.

When Thomas and I met, he already had an accurate read on his situation. As he put it, he and his company were “on eerily similar growth paths,” and he realized they both needed to implement more formal processes and structures to get to the next level. Thomas’s challenge was to preserve his entrepreneurial spirit and informal leadership style while upgrading his own processes to ensure that he continued to stay as effective as possible in a larger context and environment.

The Impact of Process on Leader A and Leader B

Thomas is not unlike top athletes, dedicated artists, and even Buddhist monks. What’s the common thread? Each knows that being committed to a set of daily processes, practices, and rituals supports their most effective way of being in the world.

Consider the 2017 Super Bowl in which the New England Patriots played against the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons were leading by a score of 28–3 in the third quarter when the game took a turn. As things started to fall apart for the Falcons, the Patriots began to gain momentum and the game went into overtime. The Patriots came back to win the Super Bowl, giving legendary quarterback Tom Brady the fifth Super Bowl win of his career.

Just two days before the game, Tom Brady was featured on the NPR podcast On Point on an episode entitled “How Aging Athletes Continue to Win Big.” Brady, who was thirty-nine at the time of Super Bowl LI, is well known for his strict fitness and nutrition regimen, and during the interview he detailed the set of rituals and processes he relies on for staying in top shape. The podcast also featured tennis superstars Serena Williams and Roger Federer, who like Brady have played well beyond the age of most athletes in their sport. These athletes have found ways to stay in tune with themselves as they age, resetting their processes as necessary to support their longevity as champions.

Many sports stars’ pregame rituals—which may seem bizarre to the outside observer—are just as much a part of their process. Serena Williams is known to wear the same pair of socks throughout a tournament, tie her shoes the same way each time she laces up, and bounce the ball exactly five times before her first serve. Despite her prodigious skill and countless hours of practice, she’s blamed losses on not following this routine. And she’s hardly alone. Sports enthusiasts ranging from world-class athletes to weekend warriors rely on their own set of rituals and practices—tapping the bat on the toe of a cleat or wearing a lucky shirt, for example, to give themselves an edge. It’s easy to dismiss such actions as superstition, but research has shown that these rituals actually work because they reduce tension and give a player a sense of control and confidence in a high-stakes, anxiety-provoking situation.1 It’s that increased calm and confidence that positively impacts performance.

Though Buddhist monks and artists may seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to the rigors of following their chosen path, neither path is possible without a commitment to process. For practitioners of modalities such as yoga and meditation, daily rituals and practices are the very bedrock of existence. And dedicated artists must put in the work every day—not just when the mood strikes them or when inspiration arrives.

Whether it’s an athlete, a monk, an artist, or an individual leader, the reality is that the second P, process, is a key part of supporting Leader A. In a world where it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day for all that we need to get done, our daily practices and routines can enhance performance, save time, help us restore, and provide critical guardrails. They can give us a much-needed sense of choice and agency in the face of what can feel like an overwhelming workload and a hectic pace. Some leaders describe this second P as their safety net—their processes provide a sense of security and prevent them from going into a free fall—while others think of it as basic “hygiene,” or practices they do every single day to keep themselves on point. Still others think of the whole set of their practices and routines as their personal operating system. I think that’s an apt image, because it captures the system-wide need for process—and reminds us that much like our laptops and smartphones, our personal operating system will need periodic upgrades.

There are four components of a leader’s personal operating system that can help us feed Leader A or get back on track quickly when slipping into a string of Leader B days. We’ll look at each in this chapter. I’ll start by asking you a series of questions so you can better understand your context and preferences and ensure that your processes are designed for and aligned with who you are and what supports your highest and best self. Second, we’ll look at the processes and structures that protect your time for what matters most. Then, I’ll share practices that ensure you are recharging your energy. Finally, we’ll end by putting it all together, and I’ll show you how you can apply the concepts in this chapter to have sound rituals to use when you’re on the road.

Design Processes That Fit You and Your Context

Because each of us is unique, with very different professional roles and responsibilities, it’s important to really understand who you are and the context within which you’re operating. As you can already see, process is going to look very different from one person to the next. Tom Brady’s processes as a football champion will be quite different from a tennis star like Serena Williams’s, and different again from what Thomas, our marketing leader, needs to do to scale commensurately with his organization. Thus, it’s important that processes are grounded in who you are and the role you are in now. Just as we saw with the first P, purpose, process can and will change according to context and circumstance.

Here are the types of questions I ask every client at the start of our coaching engagement. As you read along, consider them for yourself and jot down your answers.

Understand Your Baseline Context

What is the purpose, vision, or overall goals you are working toward? What processes or structures do you currently have in place that support meeting those?

Determine Your Personal Preferences

How do you feel about process and structure? Do you naturally gravitate toward structure, or do you find yourself resisting it? The reality is that some of us love routine while for others, like Thomas, too much routine can feel like a cage. Some of us do best when every fifteen-minute block in the Outlook calendar is accounted for; others flourish with more flexibility in the schedule. The key is to know where you fall on the structured-unstructured continuum and implement processes that free up mindshare and time without feeling like unnecessary bureaucracy is bogging you down.

We want to hit that happy medium of providing sufficient structure for ourselves without feeling constricted. Once again, it’s vitally important to self-spectate and know yourself (and for managers to know their direct reports), because a mismatch between your placement on the structured-unstructured continuum and your role can lead to stifled creativity and innovation, ineffectiveness, and eventually employee burnout. Creative and “free-thinker” types can feel hamstrung by too much routine and ritual, while those who need firm plans and boundaries in place can become overwhelmed with too much unstructured time. We want to reap the benefits of process and structure without sliding into any downsides.

What is your natural energy rhythm and pace? Do you prefer to operate in a “steady-as-she-goes” way, or are you naturally a “burst tasker”? A key part of sustaining Leader A mode is realizing that energy flows differently within each person, and it’s important to come to understand how to best care for yours. Some of us operate at our best when we’re paced in a smooth and steady way. Think of a light. “Steady as she goes” prefers to hold the light at a continuous level of brightness—not too bright, not too dim—at any given time. If this is you, then it’s important that you have processes that ensure your best chance of having roughly the same workload and workflow each day.

Further, because we’ll all have occasional crunch times, your processes should build in adequate time for a recharge after a period of sprinting. Ideally, you’ll want some downtime before a period of intense work as well. Without processes that protect your energy flow, the steady-as-she-goes leader runs the risk of fueling the burst of energy required for a sprint with anxiety and adrenaline, and then feeling exhausted and burned out once the task is done. Too many of these peaks and valleys for the steady-as-she-goes leader can even undermine a career.

At the other end of the continuum are those professionals who are natural burst taskers. They derive energy and juice from the quick hits and hard drives required to push a deliverable over the finish line. They prefer to go all in, with all they’ve got. And when they are on, they are on—the light is at 110 percent brightness. Then likewise when they’re off, they’re fully off. Burst taskers love the thrill of the deal, and once they’ve sealed the deal, they need to fully recharge (we’ll look at ways to do that later in the chapter). They excel in a pinch and thrive in any situation that requires quick deliverables, fast results, or even a steep learning curve that would leave others dismayed.

But burst taskers can often have trouble with tasks or initiatives that require a longer arc of time to complete. Some of these leaders describe almost having “leadership ADD” and are drained by processes or activities that require them to operate in sustain mode. Burst taskers thus need processes that keep the pace quick, the novelty high, and the deadlines coming.

When is your energy highest throughout the day? We all have different internal clocks, known as circadian rhythms, that govern our sleep cycles as well as our energy levels throughout the day. Some people are natural early risers and never need an alarm clock, while others will hit the snooze button three times and don’t really come to life until midmorning. It’s important to be familiar with your own individual pattern, as your circadian rhythms can determine your ideal work schedule. For most people, research shows that peaks in alertness occur twice during the day: within an hour or so of noon, and again within an hour or so of 6 p.m. Thus, you should schedule your most important tasks within those windows of peak alertness, and your least important tasks during the hours when alertness is typically lowest: very early morning, around 3 p.m., and late at night.2

Sleep researcher and management professor Christopher M. Barnes points out that often, we get this exactly wrong. Many employees find themselves working through the morning just to respond to email, which eats up their valuable first peak of alertness. It’s only after the postlunchtime slump that they’re free to turn to tasks that require more cognitive energy and higher processing—and often, employees are expected to meet an end-of-day deadline, which means their best efforts are expected at the time of their lowest energy. The workday ends as the next peak of energy begins, and in the worst-case scenario, employees work into the night, “well into the worst circadian dip of the entire cycle.”3

What’s the best-case scenario? Match your work schedule with your chronotype, or your own natural circadian rhythm. If you are a lark, or a natural early riser, be aware of the impact of working late. Conversely, if you are an owl, the lark’s late-night counterpart, do what you can to minimize working early shifts. These “chronotype mismatches” too easily make for unhappy, ineffective workers.4

Honor Your Preferences and Energy Flows

Process is one of the best ways we can honor our natural rhythms and practice good self-care. The goal is to build processes that suit your personality, your role, and your work environment. Often at the first sign of being pulled into a pitfall, the best response is to check and see if you’ve gotten lax with process. It could be that your processes no longer fit your current role, or perhaps you’ll discover a mismatch somewhere between your processes and your natural proclivities.

After answering the process questions, Deepti, a systems engineer at a tech firm, had a big aha moment. She realized she was a steady-as-she-goes person but often procrastinated and ended up defaulting to burst-tasking to get things over the finish line. The process questions helped her understand why she got sick so often after major bursts and deliverables, and why she was feeling so drained generally. She realized that she wasn’t honoring the pacing and restoration that her body and energy system needed. In terms of her specific daily processes, she realized that she tended to do emails in the morning, burning up her highest and most alert hours in the day, and saved high-productivity, intellectually demanding work for night.

Now aware of where her processes weren’t serving her, Deepti and I made changes based on what would honor both her cognitive processes and energy flows, while also making sure that the processes enhanced her overall presence and effectiveness. For Deepti, we found that blocking time for restoration after travel days or after major events was critical to maintaining her performance and reducing her sick days. We also switched when she answered email and when she engaged in work that demanded her focus and attention so that she was doing harder work at times when she had more energy.

Thomas found the opposite after answering the process questions. Thomas most loved when he was at the start of a new product development cycle, when things were new and exciting. When the company was smaller, he was motivated by all the action happening in a growing company. He realized that part of what was draining his energy was that the company was now much bigger and more of his role was shifting toward helping his team to sustain and embed some of the new changes and processes the organization had recently implemented. He was spending more and more time inside the company rather than being out in the market. He wasn’t tired because of the hours he was putting in; he was feeling drained because of the type of activities he was engaged in.

For burst taskers like Thomas, I often recommend two tactics. One is to see the benefits that greater predictability can bring. When you’re working toward more steady-as-she-goes goals, you, your team, and your loved ones at home can count on knowing when you’ll deliver and when you’ll be available. As one colleague described, it’s like a squirrel storing acorns for the winter. The second tactic is to set up a series of interim deadlines and milestones so as to model the sprints and short bursts. This way you’re making steady progress and working within the framework that comes most naturally and gives you the most energy.

For either type, if you find you’re in a role that is completely opposite to what your natural pacing is, go back to the section in chapter 2 on evaluating whether it might be time for a role change. While Thomas hadn’t yet reached this point, he acknowledged that at some point the company could hit a size where his work wouldn’t excite him, and he’d need to keep an eye on that. Knowing what size and stage of company you prefer to work and lead in can make a big difference to your longer-term career satisfaction. If you are someone who likes to drive a speedboat, be mindful of taking on jobs in organizations that operate at a pace more like that of a cruise ship.

EXERCISE

Working with Your Natural Energy Flow

  1. As you think about your own preferred pace, are you more of a burst tasker or steady-as-she-goes leader?
  2. How does that line up with the current activities in your role today?
  3. What changes, if any, can you make to better align your activities to your energy?

As you head into the next sections of this chapter, which provide advice on developing your own systems and processes, understand that these ideas are not exhaustive, nor do they fit everyone. I’ve included the ideas and strategies that have consistently yielded the best results for those I’ve worked with. As you go through them, make a check mark by ones you potentially would like to add to your personal operating system.

Preserve Your Time for What Matters Most

In Thomas’s case, a lack of personal process and structure was starting to impede his sense of freedom. The fact is, if we don’t proactively protect our time, it will get eaten away. The goal now for Thomas was to implement enough process that he could take back a feeling of control and enact a greater sense of choice and agency, which he felt he was losing.

Here are some of my favorite tips for ensuring we’re directing our time toward what matters most.

Use Color Coding

Using color coding to track the activities in your calendar is one of the easiest process upgrades you can make. It’s also one of the first I implement with clients to make sure they are focused on the upper-right quadrant (Quadrant I) of the purpose quadrants (in chapter 2).

This is a system I use in my own calendar too. What I like about it is the colors give me an easy way to check that my time is being spent on what matters most—and to readjust if it doesn’t. As I enter activities, tasks, and meetings into my calendar, I code them in the following way:

  • BLUE FOR QUADRANT I: These are QI activities, tasks, and meetings that are both “high contribution” and “high passion.” These are the “sweet-spot” activities, in that they are aligned to my current purpose and include things like writing and speaking events.
  • PURPLE FOR QUADRANT II: These are the activities that provide high contribution but are of lower passion for me. While I know there are parts of my role as a firm leader that are important to engage in, my team and especially my assistant know that if there is too much purple on the calendar, watch out—they’ll likely get the worst from me. I’ve used these purple spots in my calendar to help me make important hiring, delegating, and outsourcing decisions.
  • YELLOW FOR QUADRANT III: I still enjoy these parts of my work, but I know they’re no longer my highest and best use. I do keep some yellow for my own juice, but I know it’s important that I offer some of these opportunities to other members of my team so they grow and develop as well.
  • NO COLOR FOR QUADRANT IV: These are activities that don’t move the needle and are low passion and low contribution. I try to keep these off my calendar, but when they do appear, I know it’s time to think about delegating, hiring, or outsourcing.

An example of what my color coding for work looks like is shown in figure 3-1.

FIGURE 3-1

Color code what matters most into your calendar

Color coding has made a big difference in my personal life as well. Here’s what my personal color coding looks like:

  • RED FOR SELF-CARE: This one is actually the most difficult for me; I find that giving myself permission for self-care is rarely at the top of the priority list. This is probably the spottiest color on the calendar and one I’m trying to increase.
  • ORANGE FOR TIME I SPEND WITH MY SON, JORDAN: This includes things like school drop-offs and pickups when I can, attending karate practices, and making it to volleyball. I value this time immensely and try to make sure there’s enough orange in my calendar.
  • LIGHT GREEN FOR TIME I SPEND WITH FRIENDS AND EXTENDED FAMILY: When I see light green begin to disappear from my calendar, it’s a cue to get out of “work mode” and ensure that I’m keeping an eye on other parts of my life and attending to important relationships.

The reason this system works so well is that it allows me to quickly take a longer view on how I spend my time and identify emerging patterns. There are no statistics to collect or analyses to run (which you may not have time to conduct anyway). All you have to do is take a look at your calendar and see what the colors tell you.

It can be especially helpful when transitioning into a larger role to use color coding to ensure that you are making time for the new responsibilities you’re taking on. In consulting firms, law firms, and private equity firms, for example, at more senior levels you must be able to shift from more client-delivery or execution roles to also building in time for business development, sourcing, and firm-management activities, all of which can be color-coded into your calendar.

A longer view can help to confirm when you have given focus to something important, provide a red flag when something is not getting attended to for an extended period, or signal it’s time to pivot when a major deliverable is completed. The colors serve as a cue to adapt as needed. Ultimately, you have to recognize that the colors will never be perfectly balanced or evenly spaced. They express the many different parts of yourself and what’s most important to you now. They give you a way of making sure no one part of you or your role is getting shortchanged.

Set Power Hours

Another process upgrade to consider is instituting power hours into your schedule. These are spans of time that you set aside to focus on important tasks. This can be especially important for those who work for themselves or work from home, where building structure and discipline into the day helps to ensure that you use your time wisely, or for those who work in an office and are in meetings all day. Here’s how to implement power hours into your schedule:

  • Preset one to three power-hour blocks on your weekly calendar.
  • An optimal power-hour block is about ninety minutes. (Research has shown that the ideal brain oscillation, or the time it takes to spend and recover mental energy, is ninety minutes.5)
  • Choose the block based on the time of day when you have the greatest clarity of mind and are generally most productive.

Granted, it’s likely that some of these blocks will get scheduled over. But you have a far better shot at keeping them or at least some portion of them by putting them in your calendar. Three power hours a week seems to be the maximum I’ve observed busy leaders can preserve.

Because Thomas was more regularly presenting to the executive team on marketing analytics and data, he found that having power hours was critical to prepare for these high-stakes meetings. These meetings required Thomas to pivot from his more informal, shoot-from-the-hip approach, which worked great with customers and his team, to more structured time and prep that was more effective in the boardroom.

Leaders are often amazed how much they can get done during their power hours. Many people find they’re more productive during these preset, small windows of time rather than longer, unstructured spans because power hours have a way of sharpening our focus and giving us a quick deadline to meet.

Determine Your Home Zones and Time Zones

Many leaders share that despite the tremendous success they experience at work and in their organizations, they still experience a fair amount of guilt and stress when trying to be present and engaged when they’re at home with their loved ones or with friends. Work seems to creep into every part of their lives.

One leader named Joe was really struggling with this. Successful and effective in his business, Joe’s marriage and family were getting shortchanged. Joe shared that his wife had reached her limit with him being distracted and preoccupied at home. He described feeling the constant urge to pick up his cell phone or laptop when he was with his family in the evenings and on the weekends.

Knowing that a great many of us, like Joe, must spend at least some hours working at home, my suggestion is to establish some clear boundaries around both time and physical space. Think of your “time zones” like your power hours. Find blocks of productive work time that will work for both you and your family. For example, Joe came up with the following time zones on a Saturday so that family didn’t leak into work and work didn’t leak into family:

8:00ISH: Wake up at later time than the usual 5:30 a.m.; no electronics by bed

9:00–10:00: Have a nice breakfast with family, being fully present

10:00–NOON: After breakfast, get in some “power hours” to catch up on work in home office

NOON ON: Be present, have fun with friends or family for the rest of the day

“Home zones,” meanwhile, are the physical spaces in your house you will go to—such as your home office or den—to get a little extra work done or crank through those emails. Time zones and home zones can help you communicate your availability to others both at work and on the home front, or set their expectations about your level of presence and engagement.

If you leave your electronics only in your designated home zones, you physically have to walk a distance to get to them. This is important given the psychological pull these devices have on us. Recent research indicates that merely having a smartphone nearby—even if you’re not actively using it and even if it’s powered off—impairs cognitive capacity. Why? The research suggests that our smartphones exert a constant pull on our attention. In effect, even if we think we’re fully engaged in a task, part of us is always on alert for that next text message or email. In one study, the subjects who performed best on tests of cognitive capacity were the ones who put their phones in another room. The subjects who kept their phones beside them on their desks had the lowest scores—even though their phones were facedown and powered off.6 By leaving electronics in a home zone, you are less likely to be tempted by them, and you’re far more likely to be fully engaged in whatever you’re doing at the moment. If you do succumb to temptation, you at least slow down your reaction time, and with enough practice, you can break the habit of reflexively reaching for a device.

Cal Henderson, the CTO of Slack, has a carefully routinized schedule and designated zones that allow him to maintain high productivity and enjoy uninterrupted time with family. In addition to preset blocks of time for work, exercise, and even a weekly date night with his wife, he shared in a recent interview with Inc. that he gets “two to three hours a day with [his] 2-year-old son during the week (an hour in the morning and an hour or more in the evening),” making it a point not to work during those hours. Henderson also includes walking to and from work and doing walking one-on-ones in order to get in time for exercise, setting a ten-minute countdown so meetings don’t go overtime, and reserving a half hour in the midafternoon for brainstorming.7

FROM POST-ITS TO TECHNOLOGY APPS—KEEPING IT ALL ORGANIZED

Keeping your eye on what matters most also means you have a way to track and organize all the thousands of to-do items across your work and home life. These processes can make a significant impact on your mental clarity and level of anxiety. The litany of things we must remember across everything we lead and manage can be overwhelming. New follow-up items and to-dos seem to emerge out of every new meeting. Despite how good some of us think we are at multitasking, neuroscience research has shown that our brains can hold and process no more than two complex tasks at once—and even then, our brains “divide and conquer” by devoting one hemisphere to one task, the other hemisphere to another.a As with all the Ps, the key here is to continue to be true to who you are and to what feeds your energy and Leader A, even down to making choices between using something as old-school as Post-it notes all the way to lots of cutting-edge apps to help you protect your time, stay organized, and remain mentally clear.

  • GOOD OL’ PEN AND PAPER: Many of my clients find that they still value good ol’ pen and paper for their processes. One leader, Joel, found that the single most critical process to his day was writing on a simple Post-it note the three most important things to get done that day, including both work and personal items. He said that as long as he hit those three items, he could let go of the guilt he was feeling for all that he did not get done and still preserve a sense of satisfaction from a job well done.

    Another leader, Ming, found she needed something that would not feel so uptight and rigid, yet still kept her from feeling like things were starting to fall through the cracks. After some experimentation, she decided to print out her Outlook calendar each day and carry it around in a plastic folder. During each meeting, as new items and follow-up tasks came up, she jotted a few notes to herself on the printout of the day’s calendar. Then every Sunday, during her designated “time zone” and in her designated “home zone,” she pulled out the plastic folder, which now housed five days’ worth of notes, and looked back through and prioritized.

  • THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY: Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, I know others who love tech and upgrade their processes with the latest tech available. Following are some of the applications I’ve observed clients use with success. The key is to shop around for what works best for you.
  • PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS: When you have many things to house, including task lists and documents, and want to share them with others, programs such as Asana and Basecamp can help to keep it all organized.
  • EMAIL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS: Managing email can be a full-time job if you aren’t careful. Clients have shared that using a program like Boomerang can act like a snooze button, helping you to manage messages that you can’t deal with today but that may need a response later.
  • CONTACT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT TOOLS: Especially for those who run small businesses or are independent contractors to businesses of all kinds, having a way to manage all your contacts and relationships is critical. You can prevent losing track of vital contacts especially in your business development or marketing efforts through programs such as Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, and Freshsales.
  • CALENDAR SCHEDULING TOOLS: If you work on your own or in an organization where you don’t have an assistant, there are great tools such as Calendly and FreeBusy that can help with scheduling.

a. Gisela Telis, “Multitasking Splits the Brain,” Science, April 15, 2010, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/04/multitasking-splits-brain.

Employ Look-Aheads

Look-aheads help with planning and setting expectations with others and can be employed across many different time frames. An easy way to set these up is by time frame:

  • ANNUALLY: Block vacation windows, school performances, conferences, or other important events for the year.
  • QUARTERLY/MONTHLY: Look for travel, deadlines, or busy periods to plan for.
  • WEEKLY/DAILY: Look for a meeting where a little extra prep could make a difference to the outcome.

Choosing the best time frame is really a function of your own work context. One leader shared how his organization operated on short cycle times. Weekly and monthly time frames didn’t matter because things were always in flux. In his case, we added a short look-ahead to the start of each day to replace his habit of coming into the office and clearing email. Now, he scans for the upcoming meetings for the day and does some prep on the one or two that are especially important. Whatever your context and responsibilities, how you start your day can be critically important to how you feel the rest of the day, so block at least the first fifteen to thirty minutes for no meetings, and stay off email until you’ve identified your priorities for the day.

Another leader found that the look-ahead became critical for his family. Every Sunday morning at breakfast, the family all pulled out their laptops—his teenagers included—to do a quick scan of the week on who was doing what and who was going to be where, and to flag any important information for each other. It not only became a form of quality time together but kept all of them in greater sync with each other before heading into the week.

Make the Most of White Space

Sometimes a meeting is canceled or gets rescheduled, or perhaps you have an awkward thirty-minute gap between two important things. You may have a train ride home that takes longer than expected. All too often we’re paralyzed by the possibilities of what we could do with this “white space” on our daily calendars, expected or not, so we fritter these open windows away by looking at our phones. Then we kick ourselves later for not using the time well.

Believe it or not, the best way to make the most of white space is to decide in advance how you want to use that kind of time. One leader, Alex, described feeling especially frustrated by a long train ride home every evening after work. He found that he spent the entire sixty minutes standing and scrolling through articles on his phone. He was exasperated by how meaningless that time was.

TABLE 3-1

Example of white-space lists

Alex’s productive white-space list

Alex’s restorative white-space list

• Brainstorm on a passion project

• Write emails or texts

• Make calls like setting up appointments

• Close eyes, rest, and breathe

• Listen to music, a book on tape, or a meditation app

• Call a friend to check in and say hi

I asked Alex to create two lists for himself: a “productive white-space list” and a “restorative white-space list.” The intent of each is just what it sounds like: in productive white space, he’d use the time to complete necessary tasks. In restorative white space, he’d allow himself time to do nonwork things that would help him relax and recharge. Here’s what his lists looked like:

What you choose when white space emerges is ultimately a function of a few questions:

  • How much time do I have?
  • What is realistic to accomplish?
  • What would be most satisfying at this time?

FREE-THINKING TIME

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

—Lao Tzu

Everyone from the great ancient sages to contemporary neuroscientists and productivity experts tout the value of periodic unstructured time. Especially if you’re in a creative field—or maybe you just need to think your way through a thorny problem at work—the mind needs time to recharge, roam, free-associate, and make unexpected connections. Some of our greatest thought leaders, from Einstein to Steve Jobs to Beethoven, were known to take long walks in order to generate ideas and problem-solve.

You can actually build this time into your personal operating system through either your power hours or use of white space to ensure having unstructured time. One of my colleagues, for example, blocks off Fridays from 2:00–3:00 p.m. as his power hour for free thinking. If the weather cooperates, he spends the hour outside strolling; if not, he closes his office door and, with pen and paper before him, doodles and jots down ideas as they come to him.

In a similar vein, Bill Gates is known for his “think weeks.” Twice a year, he schedules a seven-day stretch of seclusion to ponder the future of technology. During this week he takes no calls and receives no visitors—including family and Microsoft staff—save for a caretaker who slips him two meals a day. Upon returning, he shares his ideas with the entire Microsoft empire.a

While most of us won’t have the luxury of a week, the idea of giving ourselves some solo time to think, be more reflective, or connect the dots has great value. One leader I know takes a day or two a month off but doesn’t go anywhere; this is her time to be on vacation from the outside world so she can get in some critical reflection, thinking, and restorative time. Others schedule this solo time at key milestones, such as when they need to write their annual self-evaluation, during winter holidays to step back and take stock of the year, or at the start of the new year to be more intentional about what’s to come.

Even making sure you have an extra day to yourself at the end of vacation can make a difference to your presence and mental clarity. Rather than jamming it all into five days, for example, take four days for having fun and then a day of transition to get back into the flow. For that final transition day, pick your favorite process to signal to yourself that you’re shifting gears. You’ll get more from the vacation’s restorative time this way.

a. Robert A. Guth, “In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future,” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2005, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB111196625830690477.

Having a list in advance brings ideas more readily to mind when those moments present themselves, and it reduces the chances that you’ll let the time get away from you. After a few weeks of trying it out, listening to audiobooks became Alex’s preferred white-space activity. He’s enjoying books he’s always meant to read, and he found that recharging in this way allowed him to arrive home after a long day at work feeling more rested and far less frustrated. Feeling recharged, he was able to be fully present with his partner and that much more productive at work.

Use the Brush Your Teeth Practice

The short investments of time you make in power hours or during white spaces add up. I’ve come to think of this as the brushing teeth practice. Brushing your teeth is an activity we do every day that takes just minutes but is vastly important and has a positive cumulative effect on our health. If you maintain small but steady progress on long-term projects or break down a task into short chunks of time, added up over the course of a week, month, or quarter, you’ve made progress and maybe even completed a project.

This practice was incredibly important for Deepti as it allowed her to keep a steady pace to match her natural rhythm and pacing. It helped her numerous times to get to the end zone on important large projects and presentations. By putting in thirty- to sixty-minute blocks, which was often all the time she could afford in a given day, she was more likely to get something done after a week than waiting for some imaginary eight-hour block to finish in one sitting.

PROCESS UPGRADES FOR YOUR TEAM OR ORGANIZATION

Like Thomas, many leaders find when their organizations are going through periods of hypergrowth and transformation, they need to reboot not only their own personal operating system and processes but key team and organizational processes as well.

Following are three areas every leader should have an eye on regarding team or organization-wide process upgrades. As you think of key stakeholders you engage with, such as direct reports, teams, or the board, ask yourself if there is an opportunity to reboot:

  • THE CADENCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF MEETINGS: How often are you meeting with your teams as a collective group as well as for one-on-ones? For what the group needs to achieve, do you have the optimal cadence for recurring meetings? For example, after receiving critical funding from new investors, one executive team suddenly found themselves with a much more formal board. The CEO quickly put in place a new cadence in terms of the team coming together before the board meeting to ensure that they had pressure-tested the agenda and ideas and were heading in as a united front. Likewise, this CEO recognized the importance of what happened after board meetings as well, and instituted a process for how the team would debrief after each one.

    One of the books I recommend to all leaders trying to build great teams and processes is Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage. A key chapter in that book is called “The Centrality of Great Meetings,” and I highlight it here because so much of team and organizational life is lived in meetings. Much of having a Leader A or B day at work depends on how effective those meetings are.

  • THE CADENCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATIONS: In addition to assessing their meetings, leaders like Thomas who find themselves in growing roles and organizations need to pause and give thought to their communications. How should he cascade important information—how often and through what vehicles? This review gave Thomas and me an opportunity to reoptimize and consider a greater visibility plan for him, including more informal “walk-arounds” of the office, more structured email updates, and a more defined flow for his all-hands meetings.
  • DEFINING AND TRACKING MEASURES OF SUCCESS: Another key process to keep your eye on is measuring success. How do you know if you, your team, and your organization are focused on what matters most? What metrics are critical to the business? Which ones show how you are making a difference? Depending on your role, this could include how you build dashboards, scorecards, and objectives for your teams and organization.

Maintain Processes That Recharge and Restore Your Energy

While protecting your time for what matters most is critical, it’s equally important to protect and restore your energy to feed Leader A. While we’ve covered getting in some restoration when white space emerges, you can also intentionally build in processes and create cycles for when you can restore and recharge.

Scientific evidence supports the value of this cyclical form of operating for our mental and physical well-being, as well as for our productivity. Rather than trying to “tough it out” and power through the workday when we’re physically or mentally depleted, research suggests that it’s better to stop, fully recover, and try again. Why does this approach work better than trying to “grin and bear it”? Because of the fundamental biological concept called homeostasis, or the ability of the brain to continuously restore and sustain well-being. Neuroscientist Brent Furl coined the term homeostatic value to describe the value that certain practices and actions have for creating equilibrium, and thus well-being, in the body. When the body is out of alignment from overworking, we waste a great deal of mental and physical energy trying to return to balance before we can move forward.8 It’s therefore far better to give ourselves time to recover and then, refreshed, return to our work with the battery recharged. How widespread is the problem of overworked, exhausted, and unproductive workers? A recent study found that a lack of recovery—whether due to disrupted sleep or being in a state of continuous cognitive arousal by staring at our screens—is costing US companies $62 billion a year in lost productivity. When we’re in a state of exhaustion, we simply don’t have the cognitive or physical resources to perform at our best.9

Recharging can come in many forms. I often like to think of it on a continuum from more passive forms of restoration to more active ones, as figure 3-2 illustrates. I’ve noticed that many leaders gravitate only to the more active forms, so I encourage you to take more of a portfolio approach toward having a variety of ways to restore and recover.

FIGURE 3-2

Forms of energy recharge

Twenty years ago when I was a management consultant working one hundred hours a week, I suffered from chronic back and neck pain. It took a couple of years to fully recover, and though I did, I still struggle to give myself permission to restore my body and energy periodically. This experience, however, led me to insist on addressing self-care with every leader I work with. Following are ideas I’ve experimented with myself and discussed with other colleagues and leaders who are in search of rituals that best support Leader A.

Employ the Midweek Gas Tank Fill-Up

On the left side of the continuum is good old-fashioned sleep. We all know that sleep is critical to our performance and productivity. In the book The Sleep Revolution, Arianna Huffington wrote, “We sacrifice sleep in the name of productivity, but ironically our loss of sleep, despite the extra hours we spend at work, adds up to 11 days of lost productivity per year per worker, or about $2,280.”10 Getting enough sleep—seven to eight hours a night is recommended—is critical, but I’ve seen friends and clients spend way too much time stressing about not getting as much sleep as they think they should.

Instead of trying to force yourself to get a solid eight every single night, develop a sleep ritual or process that is more realistic for you. For example, for one leader, Aton, sleep was a critical performance lever and directly impacted his ability, especially to speak and present articulately, concisely, and clearly. However, Aton was in a job that made getting eight hours of sleep a night unrealistic. We therefore had to figure out a process that fit his context and role but also ritualized his need for extra sleep. We came up with the “midweek gas tank fill-up” ritual. Sometime midweek, Aton would get one or two nights of great sleep—eight-plus hours, which was significantly more than the five to six hours he normally got. He was excited to find that the one or two nights more than filled up his gas tank and made a tremendous difference to his mental clarity and physical sense of well-being. Because his effectiveness and satisfaction were so directly tied to being more thoroughly rested, the midweek fill-up yielded a very high ROI. A naturally hard charger, Aton had never valued sleep or naps as much as he did a hard cardio workout. However, as he began to reap the benefits of greater sleep, he found that he was also more aware and began to give himself more permission on the weekends for an occasional afternoon nap as another way to restore his battery for the week to come.

Explore Passive Forms of Restoration

Like sleep, there are other ways to restore more passively—and help you rest more deeply. As a leader, you are often in action, leading, and driving things forward. Getting a massage can be a good way of allowing yourself to let go. For example, one colleague added to her processes an early morning massage two Saturdays a month. She said it was so nice to have a break from always being in charge—running the show at work and at home—and while she was on the table, she could allow “all the tension from work to seep into the ground.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, massage can help reduce stress, anxiety, muscle tension and pain, headaches, digestive disorders, and insomnia. And as the benefits of massage have become more widely known, massage is no longer available only through luxury spas or upscale health clubs. It’s now offered in businesses, clinics, hospitals, and even airports and malls, at much more affordable prices.11

There are alternative modalities that move beyond releasing muscle tension and also work with the energy fields around the body. Examples of this type of “bodywork” include acupuncture, Reiki, and cranial sacral therapy. While these forms aren’t for everyone, practitioners say that improving the flow of energy around the body promotes relaxation, reduces pain, speeds healing, and reduces other symptoms of illness.12

Frankly, anything that takes you out of the driver’s seat and gives you some personal attention—like getting a haircut or getting your nails done, for instance—can have a restorative benefit. But of course, take care that your self-care isn’t another “should.” You don’t want it to be one more thing on the to-do list or another appointment that crowds your calendar. Instead, look at these practices as a way to give yourself some quiet time and allow someone else to give energy back to you.

Stretch (Anytime, Anywhere)

So much of our day is now spent sitting at our desks or on a plane, where key muscles tighten and contract. Additionally, our necks, shoulders, and arms become tight from so many hours spent hunched over a laptop. According to Harvard Medical School, we all need to stretch in order to protect our mobility and independence for the long term. Stretching keeps the muscles flexible, strong, and healthy, and we need that flexibility to maintain a range of motion in the joints.13

You can stretch anywhere and anytime—at your desk, in your office, or at night, right before bed. When creating processes or rituals, pick a cue to signal to yourself, it’s time. Midday right before lunch is often a good time to get off your laptop and take a stretch.

I’m also a big fan of YouTube videos that you can use anywhere to get in a meaningful stretch. For example, check out “Fitness Blender: Upper Body Stretching Routine” or “Fitness Blender: Upper Body Active Stretch Workout—Arms, Shoulder, Chest, and Back Stretching Exercises.” They’re less than fifteen minutes each, and they fully stretch out the upper body after a long morning at the computer.

For those who are open to yoga, I also love Rodney Yee’s videos on YouTube. Check out his chair series, which you can actually do at your desk: his “4-Minute Neck and Shoulders Stretch at Your Desk” and “Desk Yoga: Stress-Relieving Back Stretches to Do in Your Chair” are both under five minutes long.

Recharge through Sports and Exercise

In addition to the more gentle and passive forms of rest and restoration noted so far, we can also recharge ourselves through movement, sports, and exercise. The key is to find a sport, movement, or exercise you enjoy.

The best kind of exercise is whatever personally brings you into a state of flow and presence—a feeling of being more alive—and leaves you with a greater sense of freedom. As you get more on top of your calendar through color coding and many of the other tips in this chapter, the more you’ll be able to create time for this much-needed form of energy recharge.

Thomas, our marketing leader and natural burst tasker, loved to mountain bike. Thomas shared how the thrill of being on his bike and out in nature always left him feeling free and more alive. To fit biking into his already busy schedule, Thomas did two things: he joined a local cycling club, and he color-coded into his calendar a monthly ride with them to protect this time and prioritize cycling. He couldn’t make it to their weekly events, but he could fit in a monthly ride, and the accountability he got from putting it into his calendar and riding with his new peers helped keep him on track.

In addition to the obvious cardiovascular and musculoskeletal benefits that regular exercise brings, a host of new brain research confirms that exercise boosts mood, reduces anxiety, and even protects against cognitive decline and depression.14 A recent article from Fast Company also offers some fascinating insight into what happens on a neurological level when we exercise—and gives busy leaders some heartening reassurance. It seems that when we start exercising, our brains recognize this as a moment of stress: your brain thinks you’re either fighting an enemy or fleeing from it. The brain responds with a self-protective mechanism: it triggers the release of a protein called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). BDNF helps to protect and repair memory neurons and also acts as a reset switch, which is why we often feel at ease and clearheaded after exercising. As for that fabled runner’s high, or the euphoria associated with exercising, that’s the result of another chemical the brain releases to fight stress. Endorphins can minimize the pain and discomfort associated with exercise and are responsible for that feeling of euphoria. So it’s BDNF plus endorphins that make exercise feel so good.15

But there’s more good news. New York Times best-selling author Gretchen Reynolds has written a book on the mental and physical benefits of exercise called The First 20 Minutes. According to Reynolds, we don’t need to become professional athletes in order to get the best benefits for health or happiness. On the contrary, smaller amounts of exercise are sufficient to boost happiness and productivity, and in fact, it’s in the first twenty minutes of exercise that the major health benefits such as prolonged life and reduced disease risk arrive.16 So when you’re in a time crunch, you can cut yourself some slack, knowing that if you can get in twenty focused minutes, you’re still doing your body and your mind a favor.

Putting It All Together: Rituals for the Road

For many leaders, work travel accounts for a disproportionate amount of their time and energy. Creating rituals and processes to optimize your time on the road can make all the difference in keeping your energy sustained, as opposed to coming back feeling absolutely drained and unhealthy. There is a clear association between frequent business travel and a higher risk of chronic disease. A recent study examining health data from thousands of US employees produced some sobering findings. Compared to those who spent one to six nights a month away for business travel, those who spent fourteen or more nights away per month had significantly higher body mass index scores and were significantly more likely to report poor self-rated health; clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression, and alcohol dependence; no physical activity or exercise; smoking; and trouble sleeping. For those who traveled twenty-one or more nights per month, the odds of being obese were a staggering 92 percent higher compared to those who traveled only one to six nights per month. This “road-warrior” group also had higher blood pressure and lower HDL cholesterol (the so-called good cholesterol).17 No matter how much you travel, time away comes with its own set of stresses and takes you out of your normal routine and processes, making it more difficult to exercise, eat healthfully, and get enough sleep. Here’s how to keep feeding Leader A while you’re on the road.

Be Judicious about Networking Time

Work travel often involves dinners and late nights. Employ a look-ahead ritual and take special note of the evenings where calling it a day earlier (perhaps you have an early morning flight the next day) or respectfully declining an invitation would be best. One of my colleagues who is also an author and speaks at special events shared with me how she became much more judicious about accepting client dinner invitations. Going out the evening before she was to serve as a speaker was negatively impacting her ability to deliver the next day. She noticed the conditions that led to her most successful events and found that the common denominator was a good night’s rest and preparation. As a result, she let her clients know in advance she wouldn’t be joining them the night before so she could deliver the highest level of quality. Instead, she stayed for any social events that followed her presentation.

Stay Productive on the Flight Out, Restorative on the Flight In

The great news is travel also inherently offers blocks of power hours. One leader who traveled almost two-thirds of the year became more intentional with his flight time. He decided that if it was going to be such a big part of his job, it was worth reoptimizing how he spent his energy on the road—or in the air. After some experimentation he came up with two rules of thumb. On the way out, he used the flight as productive white space, reviewing important documents, engaging in strategic reflection, or moving the needle on a top-priority item. After a long day of meetings and on his return flights home, he gave himself permission to relax. He used this flight time as restorative white space by listening to music, napping, or reading a book. This leader came up with a great reminder phrase for himself—productive on the flight out, restore and relax on the flight in.

If you’re crunched for time, tighten this up and do it for takeoff and landing when you can’t have a computer up. For example, Alexis Ohanian, the head of Reddit, said that he “read[s] a book during takeoff and landing periods, but as soon as that bell dings, the laptop is out and I’m online.”18

Keep the Blood Circulating

A frustration I often hear is how work travel gets in the way of physical exercise. Let go of the expectation that your workout has to be perfect or can only be counted as exercise if you are on a treadmill or favorite running trail. And again, white spaces can come to the rescue. Look at all the places where you have white space when waiting to board a flight. During these windows, there usually isn’t enough time to pull up the laptop and get anything meaningful accomplished, so too often, we end up on phones, mindlessly scrolling until the boarding agent calls our boarding group number. Next time, get in your movement and exercise. Bring a change of travel clothes so that after a long day of meetings you’re in casual wear and walking shoes. Walk up and down the hallway of the airport and watch your Fitbit steps crank up. This is a great way to get some blood and oxygen circulating in the body before sitting on a long flight. You can do the same thing on the flight itself. Get up every hour to walk, move your body, stretch or shake out your legs, or circle your ankles to keep the circulation going.

Find Which Processes Work for You

If you naturally resist process and structure like Thomas, there is a good chance that you may feel overwhelmed with all this talk of process, and are wondering where and how to begin.

First, remember that process is unique to each person, and the key is finding what works for you. So rather than burdening yourself with another “should,” reframe process as a commitment to yourself and to the purpose and vision you hope to achieve. Rather than a cage or a constraint, process is meant to be a support, and it can even be a means to greater liberation. With the right processes in place, we’re less susceptible to pendulum swings between excessive spontaneity and rigid adherence to a schedule. We also become less dependent on moods or feeling states to drive our behaviors and actions, and instead have clearer, intentional choice and agency in how we choose to spend our time and energy. In short, our highest and best self is protected by our processes.

The second thing to remember is that process is one of our best ways of getting back on track quickly. What most of my clients have found is that there are one or two processes that play the biggest role in staying in Leader A mode and becoming much less susceptible to Leader B days. Take, for example, Joel, who had his Post-it note for his top three things. He found that this simple ritual could make for a really effective, present, and satisfying day. The great news was that whenever he started to feel overwhelmed or “off,” he realized that all he had to do was reinstate the ritual—and he was back on track again. For Aton, the midweek gas tank fill-up was the process that most impacted his effectiveness and performance. Deepti found that the brushing her teeth practice was the best way to feed Leader A, and Thomas learned that keeping some semblance of power hours, even if abbreviated to a thirty-minute window, could make or break how he felt about a given day.

Give yourself some time to experiment, and then narrow the processes down to one or two that you must have, and see the rest as icing on the cake. One client said his top two processes reminded him of a hammock: with these routines in place, he could be at ease, knowing not only what was ahead, but how he was going to tackle the many tasks of the day. When you have a process that works, you make your best practices not a flash in the pan, but a daily habit you can rely on.

What to Remember:

  • Being committed to process, structure, and rituals can enhance performance, save time, help you restore, and provide guardrails in a world where there is always more to do than hours to do it in. The second P, process, is like keeping a personal operating system up to date. Much like our laptops and smartphones, our processes are often due for a periodic upgrade.
  • Process looks very different from one person to the next. It’s important to create processes grounded in who you are and the role you are in now. Consider your relationship to process and structure and whether you are someone who naturally gravitates to it or resists it. You will want to have enough process to derive its benefits without letting it tip into unnecessary bureaucracy. Additionally, you should consider your natural energy flows and pacing—burst tasker or steady as she goes—and try to match activities to your chronotype and circadian rhythms as well.
  • If you don’t proactively protect your time, it will get eaten away. Let process help you take back a feeling of control and enact a greater sense of choice and agency. You can do this by looking back at your passion-contribution matrix from chapter 2 on purpose and set up your calendar to protect your highest and best activities—including color coding, power hours, look-aheads, time zones, and home zones.
  • Research has validated the importance of restoration and recovery to our performance. Having a portfolio of processes—from more passive forms to more active ones—to restore and recharge your energy is important. Set up rituals that give you a better shot of getting rest and sleep, that relieve tension, or that help you experience a greater sense of freedom so you can keep the battery recharged.
  • Many of the concepts in this chapter can be helpful for setting up rituals for the road. Limit your networking time, especially on evenings when getting to bed early is critical to your effectiveness the next day. Set up processes to maximize the flight out and the flight home, and still keep your blood circulating in airports and on planes, so you have a better shot at getting home feeling less drained.
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