Supercharge Your Mindset. Learn from Berlin(ian?) Waiters

This is not productivity advice

This is what the science says about mindset and motivation.

This article is not about doing more - it's about feeling better and protecting your energetic state while doing the hard stuff - which is, coincidentally, the important stuff.

Following on from last week’s ‘Go Big or Go Home is Bullshit’ post - I was asked about how do you do the keep doing the do - and stay positively energetic in the process…

TL:DR - I am not going to include SMART Goals, Get enough Sleep, Exercise, be mindful and all of those other things that you have seen a million times before. Yes, looking after yourself can have a massive positive impact, but I thought you might be interesting in some new stuff - that works, that you probably haven’t read before. (The truly magical ingredient is the one at the very end).        

I am kind like that.

However, whether you implement any of it is up to you - don't get me started on the science of how reading new information fools us into feeling like we have done something - so we then don't follow through.

Onwards!

The Hard Yards...

I am sure that you have found that doing a lot of things can be quite draining - especially, if those things are complex, difficult, or long term…

So, behold the science on the subject.

All of the following suggestions are based on published academic research (by actual academics) - not by half an hour of googling ‘productivity tips’ - I have listed the studies if you want to read more.

This does not preclude my inclusion of the usual knob gags and swearing (I have a brand to protect, after all).

The core principle in developing a Supercharged Mindset is to conserve our strength and use it for valuable activities, rather than spaff it all like an undergraduate during Freshers Week. The most useful theory here is, I think, related to the zeigarnik effect - about maintaining what she called ‘open cognitive loops’ in our brain.

Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, while in a cafe in Berlin, noticed that waiters who still had an open order on the go tended to remember more of that order than once that order had been completed.

So, like any real scientist, she used that ‘WTF moment’ as a basis for some detailed experimentation and found her initial hypothesis to be true.

The Zeigarnik effect is generally described as:

”the tendency of people to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks”

Which is great, if you are remembering short term things and they are ‘completable’.

However, maintaining a lot of open cognitive loops takes quite a heavy toll in terms of generating stress, and feelings of overwhelm and reflects our brains inclination to seek closure and resolution.

It's the same as with your browser or your phone: the more tabs you have open, the more energy and processing power you need.

Workload Issues.

Maybe you have noticed that life is becoming ever more complex, information and input heavy and that running a business feels like being on the receiving end of a never-ending firehose of shit to do, in-rushing information and dealing with other people’s nonsense.

Open Loop.

Open Loop.

Open Loop.

This thinking is part of what underpins my position of ‘Go Big or Go Home is Bullshit’

Too much to do, over too long a timeline with too little ‘Completion Bonus’ (the little squirt of Dopamine we get when we finish or resolve something).

The Money Shot

Ok, so what do we do about it.

Well firstly you have to realise that you have a single basic choice to make.

Carry on as usual, or admit to yourself that you have to make some wholesale changes in your work patterns that are built around how your brain actually works.

What actually works.

1. Managing Cognitive Load through Simplification.

Before you start any project - (A project is something that has more than one task in it) - break it down into actual tasks.

A task is something that can be done in a few minutes.

Call Susan about what she wants to do on Saturday - is a task.

‘Do Marketing’ - is a project.

Reducing complexity and clearly structuring tasks prevents cognitive overload, preserving energy and motivation for higher-priority tasks.

Also - your ‘To-do’ list actually reduces visibly and you can feel progress.

Result! - Source: Sweller, J. (2021). Cognitive load theory and educational technology. Educational Technology Research and Development,

2. Pause Before You Do Anything

Yes, I know this is an odd suggestion, but the research here is pretty compelling.

So, you have simplified your workload into small, strikeoffable tasks - and you know what you will be doing for the rest of the day.

Now - Do NOTHING.

Not, dick around on your phone, not fettle around with something to distract yourself. Just sit and reflect on what you are planning to go.

Research indicates that taking time to reflect before starting a project can boost productivity by triggering the Default Mode Network (DMN) which is the circuit in our brain that becomes active when we don't apply external pressures on it.

This reflection period helps you to process information, integrate new insights, and align your actions with your desired outcomes. Such deliberate pauses are linked to creativity and introspection, facilitating better long-term memory and a stronger sense of self.

Converging evidence identifies a link between DMN integrity and cognitive health in older adults.

Source: Buckner et al., (2008) The brain's default network: anatomy, function, and relevance to disease.

3. Ready, Set, GO - Then STOP!!!

You have probably heard about this before, it has many names, Pomodoro, Sprints, Timeboxing or even how Ernest Hemmingway completed his novels.

Decide a specific time to work, set an alarm, work as hard as you can for that time - and then STOP. Hemmingway would even stop writing in the middle of a sentence (kind of a Zeigarnik flex - as far as I can tell).

I have some bad news.

• You are not limitlessly powerful.
• Your performance decreases the longer you do something.
• Nobody is coming to save you.

So, you might consider devising a work pattern that gives you the best chance of getting the most out of yourself.

If not you, then who? If not now then when?

There is a lot of research conducted over the last ten years or so that clearly proves that short, focused sprints help teams maintain momentum, manage workloads effectively, and avoid delays by limiting task procrastination, or straight up avoidance of something because it feels too big to tackle.

Source: Staats, B. R., Milkman, K. L., & Fox, C. R. (2012). The team scaling fallacy: Underestimating the declining efficiency of larger teams.

Lastly…the Big Finish.

This is split into two parts, because humans are both complicated and slippery fuckers. We are excellent at both making ourself miserable AND demotivating ourselves no matter how much work we actually accomplish.

So two things to finish, to help keep yourself out of your own way.

Firstly

4. Celebrate Like Its Your Job (coz it kinda is.)

After your sprint take a break and actually celebrate. The science of taking microbreaks is old news, (Kim, S., Park, Y., & Niu, Q. (2017)…so here is the stuff about celebrating.

Celebrating is the new kid on the block!

The goal for celebrating is to rewire ourselves towards feeling like we are doing something fabulous, rather than grudging our way through piles of overwhelming misery.

And, just like ANY behaviour change, positively rewarding desired behaviour has a MUCH greater effect than trying to punish out undesired behaviour. B.F. Skinner can fuck all the way off.

Regularly acknowledging small achievements activates reward pathways in the brain, reinforcing motivation, reducing stress, and increasing engagement.

Woolley & Fishbach (2018) found that immediate rewards following task completion sustain motivation and reduce perceived task difficulty.

Feel better AND feel better at your job? - I spoil you, I really do!

Source: Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2018). It’s about time: Earlier rewards increase intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(6), 877-890.

…how do you celebrate.

I am going to keep it PG here as I am a grown up professional…obvs.

So, I am going to share mine.

Anyone who has spent any time with me in a workshop, or a course or when I am consulting will tell you - When I 'smash it', as I often do - I pat myself on the back. And every time I do - it brings me real joy. I have been doing it for years following an NLP course I went on back in the dawn of time. Technically I created an ‘Anchor’. I focussed very deeply on feeling amazing - then linked the pat with the feeling. It sounds nuts - but it totally works.

The point I want to to take from this is the power of tiny rituals. It doesn't matter what they are, listening to music, taking a short walk, a little self love - whatever brings you joy - structure it and then repeat it every time you finish your time slot.

(Don’t reward yourself with food - you are not a dog!)

Consistently marking tiny achievements with these personal rituals anchors satisfaction, enhancing emotional reinforcement and energizing continued effort.

Oettingen (2014) illustrated that regularly connecting successes to positive rituals significantly boosts motivation and perseverance.

Source: Oettingen, G. (2014). Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. Penguin.

Secondly

5. Manage Your Focus!

Lastly - kinda

I want to help you avoid one of the most pervasive thinking traps that accomplishment minded people lure themselves into.

The trap is looking ahead at the amount of work still to do. (This is why having a MASSIVE ‘To-Do’ list full of ‘projects’ rather than tasks is so soul-crushingly depressing).

As mentioned above, we like closure and resolution (Zeigarnik Effect) and we find having a set of consistently open cognitive loops as exhausting as trying to keep strangers happy.

So, rather than focus on the uncompleted…focus on the work and progress already done. This is why I prefer paper lists as the amount of work is still visible (the digital ones immediately tidy away the done stuff).

Everyone’s favourite marketing researchers, Huang & Zhang (2011), demonstrated that having visual progress indicators significantly enhances motivation and goal pursuit.

Not a little - SIGNIFICANTLY. And for scientific researchers to say significantly, the dataset must be enormously compelling.

Visual indicators of progress reinforce the feeling of advancement, energizing and motivating continued effort through tangible evidence of achievement.

Source: Huang, S. C., & Zhang, Y. (2011). Motivational consequences of perceived velocity in consumer goal pursuit.

The Takeaway

This has ended up being a little bit longer than I anticipated and frankly, I expect almost nobody to get to this point…

The Recipe for Supercharging Your Mindset

1. Simplify – Break big projects down into small tasks that you can cross off.
2. Pause – Activate your Default Mode Network to increase your creativity, focus and general performance.
3. Sprint – Work to specific and defined time windows ONLY.
4. Stop – I think you know what stop means.
5. Celebrate – Embed new behaviour patterns by congratulating yourself for doing what you said you would
6. Refocus – on how much you have done. RESULT!
7. Repeat.

Once you see this pattern, you can’t unsee it.

It is used in all elite performance models, from the military, business to elite sports and professional media.

The Magic Ingredient.

You are not alone.

Now, more than ever

“Business is a team sport, played in public”.

Having the right people around you is how ALL elite performers become elite.

Uchino et al. (2018) demonstrated social support significantly enhances emotional resilience, motivation, and mental health.

But to put it simply, there is a reason why Olympic athletes, word leading academics, and performers ALL HAVE COACHES.

Having support is the only way we can go from doing fairly well to better than we ever thought possible.

If only you knew someone who can help ….?