INSIGHTS (on leadership/self-leadership)
Two Harvard psychologists would have you understand that peak performance happens in a very specific circumstance. I’m referring to The Yerkes-Dodson Law (established by Robert Yerkes and John Dodson), which shows that to achieve peak performance, you have to be in a state of optimal anxiety and discomfort. If your stress level is too low, you’re not challenged enough, your full abilities aren’t stimulated, and performance suffers. If your stress level is too high, it becomes debilitating, and again, performance suffers. Think of it as a bell curve – performance levels peak (the top of the bell), when your stress level is at its midpoint.
The lesson here is simple. You perform at your best when you’re outside your comfort zone, but not pushed all the way to your danger zone.
Where can you take that one more step of discomfort forward, to land in that performance sweet spot? Or a step backward, to instead ease stress a bit, and move into the peak performance zone from that direction?
IMPERFECTIONS (a mistake many make)
I’m betting at least half of you won’t agree with what I’m about to share. I’d love to hear from you, regardless of what side of this argument you fall on. I think you make the mistake of violating common courtesy when you recline your seat on an airplane. The way I see it, when you do so, you’re knowingly putting yourself before your fellow traveler by infringing upon their space. You’re saying, “my comfort is more important than yours.” You might even be setting off a potential chain reaction of selfishness – the person whose space you infringed upon no longer has enough space, so now they’re more likely to pay it backward, and so on.
“But,” you argue, “the seats are made that way – if the airlines didn’t want us reclining, they shouldn’t have made them that way!” I’d like to think of it as an option extended to you – to extend your seat back when the conditions are right (like when there’s either no one, or a small child, sitting behind you).
Now, I do understand medical issues, like someone who has a bad back, for example, and can’t sit at a 90-degree angle for several hours (although that’s usually not what’s happening with the “violators”). But if this is indeed you, at least do what one flight attendant suggested in this viral New York Times article on airplane etiquette: let the person behind you know you’re going to recline (versus slamming back and compromising their laptop, drinks, etc., which has happened to me way too many times.)
I get it – we’re not talking about earth-shattering stuff, here. Who cares if you lean back or not, right?
Your fellow travelers do.
And I’m all for trying to infuse tiny, low-stake, little wisps of courtesy back into a world where it can feel like it has all but evaporated.
IMPLEMENTATION (one research-backed strategy, tip, or tool)
In last week’s issue, I shared what the research-backed sweet spot is in terms of how many meetings to eliminate. Thereafter, a reader reached out to share a handy tactic for further addressing meeting-madness. (Thank you, Richard Desmarais – I think it’s really smart and am passing it along here). The idea is to enable Google Calendar’s “speedy meeting” option, which ends 30-minute meetings 5 minutes early, and longer meetings, 10 minutes early. As Richard wrote me, “If I book a 60-minute meeting and invite others to it, it will appear on our calendars as a 50-minute meeting – so we get back 10 minutes in our day. Or, we can debrief in those 10 minutes, or have more time to prepare for the next meeting.”
We need all the ideas we can get to take back our calendars! If you have one, please do share.
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