Shutting Down

to Power Up

When I first started at Google, this was especially difficult for me. After all, I did not grow up in an academic family, I did not have a fancy education or a huge amount of experience, I hadn’t even gone to university.

All this manifested inside my mind as “Ben, you slipped through the cracks and you have to do everything in your power in order not to be found out” I would compensate with doing extra work, stretching my hours longer and show up with an intensity that (I assumed) looked strong, powerful and driven from the outside. This inauthenticity was actually eating me up on the inside.

Just until he’s in primary school

I was reminded of this whole thing today in a coaching call. My client was working through a similar challenge. He had just started a new job, a dream job in fact, a management gig in an industry that really inspires him. He’s willing to go hard, put in the work, show up early, work late.. But somehow he knew that it would slowly kill him, so we chatted about it.

When I inquired about his plan, he said “I’ll just go hard for a few years until my son is in primary school and then dial back a little…”

This is a common thing I hear often and I translate it as “I will sacrifice my own mental and physical wellbeing for year for some hypothetically great future”

Once, I put it that way, people usually get curious - “yeah, nah, I don’t want that”

Learning to Balance Early

It’s like little children learning to ride a balance bike. Those tiny bikes with a relatively low seat and no pedals. The kiddo would just take a few steps to build momentum and then coast a bit and start it all over. Initially, kids are really unstable, they swerve all over the place, occasionally fall off but will quickly get a hang of the whole idea of balancing. Once the child knows how to do that, you can just put them on a normal pedal bike and they will be off into the sunset in no time.

Learning to balance early will be useful later when it matters.

I believe the same applies to the way we work.

Knowing what’s nourishing & whats draining

For the longest time, I would treat most of my work tasks relatively similar in terms of energy balance. There was only one way for me to operate - high intensity. In hindsight that nonsense though, there are huge differences in what the type of task would do to my internal energy. A client call would have totally different impact than a 1:1, an All-Hands or a Revenue call. Those things could not have been any different in the way they would either give me energy e.g. nourish me or drain me off energy.

A healthy exercise is, looking at the work calendar from last week and giving every single task/meeting a little attribute. e.g. “+” for adding energy, “-” for draining energy. I think there are no zero effect tasks or meetings, they either add energy or reduce it. That simple.

Once we know what’s personally nurturing and draining we can then start balancing these things around. e.g. if writing the daily report really drains me after an already busy day. I might chose to move that as the first task on the next day. This will then allow me to review the previous day with fresh energy and capitalize on my already high energy. Ideally these energy giving and draining tasks cycle throughout the day. So after a period of expenditure, there is a period of recharging.

If the drainers vastly outnumber the nourishers, then you’re in the wrong place.

Of course, we are often not fully in control of our tasks and calendars, so this is hard to get it perfect. However it’s worth paying attention to it. Even a slight adjustment may make a huge difference.

When is enough really enough

Think about a typical Amazon delivery driver. It’s certainly a tough job, it entails long hours of hard physical work in any weather, high levels of focus in traffic, the occasional jump scare from a overly happy dog. However, when the truck is empty and the last package has been delivered, the work is done! There is a sense of completion, an end-point.

With our modern type of work, it’s almost impossible to ever “be done”. Especially if you are a knowledge worker, there is an infinite amount of things to be done, projects to be worked on, things to be fine-tuned, reports to be written, slides to be designed etc.

This can become a real problem.

My clients average day would start at 8 in the morning and finish at 5 in the afternoon. It would then continue after kiddo bedtime until he himself is tired. The kicker: in-between there is also the endless stream of pings on his cell phone. Little things to be organized, decisions to be made, update to be given.

You can see the issue with that. There is never an end. There is never a state of “enough” or “done”.

The body and the mind will never get the opportunity to recover, they start to exist in a state of permanent adrenaline and dopamine wiredness. This can then lead to issues with sleep, metabolism, immunity, mental health etc. Our bodies and minds are just not designed to exist in this state in perpetuity. Of course a short sprint of that during a particularly busy time is totally fine, but not long.

Shutting down to Power up

There are 2 simple tools that can help curb a lot of the negative effects of this existence.

1. A Shutdown Ritual: Having a clearly defined and rehearsed ritual to end the work day. Even if there are still emails to be answered, slides to be made, proposals to be sent. Here are some ideas:

   1. Set a timer at the same time every day to initiate the shutdown ritual

   2. Initiate shutdown with a designated song or sounds

   3. Move your body in a different state e.g. stand up from your chair, do a jump, clap your hands 3 times

   4. Declare you are shutting down for the day e.g. “Hereby I declare my workday to be completed. I have had a productive day, here are 3 important things I got done today. I am exited about tomorrow to start working on the following 3 things. I will now shut down my computer and work phone”

   5. Switch off your workstation. If it’s a laptop, put it in your bag or drawer.

   6. Switch off your work phone or if you need to be available for emergencies switch off general notifications and only allow emergency notifications.

   7. Reset and clean your workspace for the next day.

2. Setting Boundaries: Most of this won’t work in isolation and may even be perceived as something negative by managers and peers. So it is important to communicate about it and explain what you are up to. e.g. “Hi Manager, I would like to let you know that I am trying a new ritual on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. On those days, I am scheduled with childcare, sports and social activities after work and will not be available after 5. Can we chat about how to best co-create that important space?”

   You may start small and work your way up there. It is important to create and communicate your own boundaries. If these are not clear to yourself yet - that’s the place to start.

What’s the point anyways

Here’s the kicker, if you can figure out that balance for yourself early on, you are much more likely to perform at a high lever for a really long time. This will mean happy customers, happy colleagues, happy managers, happy self. This means promotions, salary increases, new responsibilities and all that while enjoying yourself and your work. This applies equally to employees and self employed people.

Please note that everyone is different, so there is no hard&fast rule that works for everyone. You will need to do the work to find out your own pace, it can be a really fun experiment that may just change your life for the better.

If you’ve tried and are still stuck, drop me a note at ben@hyneck.com and we’ll brainstorm together.