Unpredictable Patterns #8: Rhythm and Routines
On why remote work requires the building of new routines, on how breaking rhythms is key to policy work and in praise of audio meetings.
February can take a real toll on us. A lot of folks I have spoken to recently have admitted that they are tired - and feel spent. I get it, and tried this week to think a bit about how we can deal with that. As always - keep comments and ideas coming! I would love to hear from you on other subjects, ideas or questions we can explore together.
Dear Reader,
We live in time. Sometimes this means that we do not see time - its structures and flow - as clearly as we should, and sometimes it means that we ignore time when we try to solve our problems.
Rhythm and routines as units of time
We often speak of saving time or planning time, but time does not exist in hours or minutes to be strewn across a set of tasks - when we treat time that way we will end up flailing between moments and succumbing to stress and anxiety. Time exists in larger chunks - in rhythms and routines. Whenever we are studying a problem it really helps to think about it in those chunks, and consciously build our own time in them as well.
This will become increasingly important for organizations as they now have signalled a shift into remote work. There is a lot of handwringing about this change, and a lot of people who feel that it will mean that organizations become less efficient and that work will slow down - or even that innovation will become impossible. All of these concerns are valid, but it is interesting to think about what it is that we lose with remote work.
The most obvious thing is that we lose a shared space. We re-negotiate work space and have created a weird third place - Zoom space - where we interact. The remote forms of interaction are just beginning to take shape. They have been organized around the meeting, but increasingly also replicate coffee breaks and just working in silence side by side. There is a weird focus on video, where audio is increasingly conquering the world outside of work with podcasts and apps like Clubhouse. The next step in this evolution will be to admit that sharing an audio space may be as efficient as or more efficient than forcing people to sit in front of a screen. It would enable things like walking meetings, meetings in places with lower bandwidth and a focus on what is being said rather than on a constantly disappointing video presence.
But this is the obvious change. The less obvious change is the fact that when going remote we lose several routines and rhythms. From coming to work in the morning and starting up the day to having lunch to concluding the day’s work and leaving work we will have lost the basic, essential rhythms of work.
A rhythm is something we share with others. Rhythms cannot be private, but are most often shared between several people who exist and work in that same pattern of time - developing routines for what they do.
Routines are often denigrated as boring - but that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are - routines are sequences of steps that execute a specific, complex task - and they are recurring in a rhythm that makes it possible to creating anything at all. Routines are key to creativity and innovation.
The establishment of routines ultimately allow for replacing intentions as the key driver behind the work you want to do (Gärling 1992) - and this increases the probability that you will really finalize the work that you are undertaking (it is no accident that personal health programs or programs to fight addiction like AA are built around rhythms and routines - the meeting, the routine introduction etc).
In fact, when we shift to working remote it is probably accurate to think about an organization as a set of routines executed in a set of rhythms and so really focus on these to ensure that the organization works. Instead of viewing organizations as hierarchies and reporting lines they become cadences and habits.
That also means that we need to get better at designing rhythms and routines. This will present a number of challenges, but we can start with understanding these two concepts better.
Routine has its roots in the French word route, or road. This reveals something important (never underestimate the wisdom enshrined in single words and their conceptual grammar). A routine cannot just be a sequence of actions endlessly repeated - it needs to be oriented towards something, it needs to lead somewhere. When we design our routines they need to be tethered to our objectives and aspirations.
It is instructive to look at how Hemingway describes his daily writing routine:
”When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there.
You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that.
When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.”
This has been quoted many times, but there is a point in here that easily gets lost: Hemingway knew how to stop in order to ensure that the routine could be picked up easily the next day. He stops while he has his ”juice” and knows what will happen next - because the routine is not an isolated sequence - it is oriented towards a rhythm that ultimately produces a book.
Good routines connect today with tomorrow, and with an ultimate goal.
Rhythm also reveals something important as you trace the roots of the word to the Greek rhein - to flow. A rhythm is a flow - and this can be interpreted in both individual psychological ways and in organizational theory. The flow in a rhythm connects different routines across the organizations as to avoid ending up with islands of time that do not connect with the rest of the organization. It also enables the personal flow that Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi has helped us understand - that feeling of working at the edge of your own ability and learning at the same time.
Rhythms are harder to build than routines - since they require several routines to come together and find order in time. But when they work they provide the key to regulating the speed of execution in an organization. The word rhythm is related to the word rhyme - something that reminds us that good rhythms connect and create complex wholes.
Rhythms, routines and power
Not only do we need to focus more on rhythms and routines when we shift to working remotely. They are also helpful concepts when we try to understand politics - in organizations and in our polities. The one who sets the rhythm and determines the routines is the one that holds the power. Figuring out rhythms is key in policy work as well — if we do not know the routines of policy makers we will ultimately fail to come with timely information, and our advocacy will fall flat. The routine of legislation - with proposals, debate, votes and decisions - is key to anyone interested in the work of shaping a society.
Mapping out routines and rhythms is also important when it comes to proposing your own initiatives. If you do it with great timing, those proposals can get legs and really move the debate. Game-changers are not just great ideas, they are great ideas in the right rhythm. A large part of thought leadership is the understanding and establishment of rhythms.
Rhythm generates power. We know this. among other things, from the amount of war-dances in the world, and a dance is nothing else than a set of routines executed in excellent rhythm, from the haka to the Russian cossacks, dances have been a way to demonstrate graceful power.
Rhythms also provide a key vector of attack. Breaking someone’s rhythm is one of the most subtle strategies in individual martial arts and warfare. Here we can go to Miyamoto Musashi’s legendary manual for sword-fighting - the Go Rin No Sho. Mushashi points out that you can break an enemy’s rhythm in several ways. If you detect it you can attack in a way that he cannot respond to because of the rhythm he is stuck in. He also notes that we can infect the enemy with our own rhythm and then break it - which requires even more skill.
Musashi also notes two other things about rhythm that are essential. The first is that we must notice when we are in a deadlock rhythm with an opponent and then we need to renew and set a new rhythm:
"To renew" applies when we are fighting with the enemy, and an entangled spirit arises where there is no possible resolution. We must abandon our efforts, think of the situation in a fresh spirit then win in the new rhythm. To renew, when we are deadlocked with the enemy, means that without changing our circumstance we change our spirit and win through a different technique.
Here one can think of how politics locks us in a rhythm and you notice that the tech-lash really has locked the tech industry in a rhythm where it responds to attacks and then attacks come in again, and they respond and…this rhythm is an entangled spirit, and the way forward here might be in setting a new rhythm - perhaps through the invention and launch of institutions, or through a conscious program of change executed in a rhythm of a company’s own choosing.
Musashi also notes that rhythms are what allow you to be fast without hurry - and concludes that skill is about staying in time.
”In the Way of dance, accomplished performers can sing while dancing, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. The "old pine tree" melody beaten on a leather drum is tranquil, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. Very skillful people can manage a fast rhythm, but it is bad to beat hurriedly. If you try to beat too quickly you will get out of time. Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen.”
Rhythm, and routines, are key elements in any strategic thinking - and even more so in a world where we are interacting across markets and continents. The pandemic has also reminded us of how important a synchronized global rhythm really is - how we took it for a given quality in modern life - and how complex things get when that common rhythm breaks - in trade, in vaccine programs, in economics and society overall.
Applying rhythms and routines to work
How do we put this set of ideas to work? There are a number of relatively easy things we can do, or try, if we agree that the mental model of rhythms and routines is one that is worth exploring more.
First, we can look at our own organization and define the the routines and rhythms that we use to get our work done, as well as that of the external environment we interact with. Here we can even imagine a kind of notation system for organizations, not unlike musical scores: routines mapped against weeks and years in a score for the organization.
Second, we can break rhythms that are destructive or simply deadlocked. Identify the hard problems - they are likely to be where we are stuck in a rhythm that is debilitating - and try to break that rhythm with a new one. Find a new set of actions, announcements or changes that allow for breaking the old rhythm.
Third, study rhythms and routines in other organizations, and look at what you can steal and work with - and look at the whole routine. There are a lot of people who have copied Amazon’s ”working backward”-routine, but focused on one element of it - the writing of a press-release or narrative, and forgotten things like the FAQ that seem a bit more boring, but likely is a key part of why that routine has worked.
Starting here, teasing out the overall rhythm of work and organizations, allows us to take control over a post-pandemic reality in which a lot of the established and given rhythms and routines are disappearing fast.
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On the blog this week
A few posts on the blog this week may interest you.
A reflection on Noam Bardin’s leaving note from Google is found here.
Episode 6 of Richard Allan’s podcast Regulate Tech is up - this one on splinternets.
Thank you for reading and keep the comments coming! I also very much appreciate ideas about other people who could find these notes interesting.
Nicklas
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Gärling, Tommy ”The importance of routines for the performance of everyday activities” in Scandinavian Journal of Psychology June 1992