MAKING TEAM BUILDING BETTER, THE BEST PLACE TO RELAX & TO DO LIST APPS

Welcome to Potentially Focused and your Thursday morning, July 11th! Hope the summer is off to a great start for you. Today, we … Figure out how to make team building rituals feel unforced (aka not cringe-inducing), check out To-Do List Apps, and most importantly, discover the ideal place to rest, relax, and recharge.

Plus, as always, we share some fun things for the weekend.

Potentially Focused is a newsletter for busy people in the TV business (or not) who are curious. Anyone who needs a change. Everyone interested in growth, great new possibilities, and what makes us tick. Each edition features quick links to at least one great piece of content on professional development and one centered on personal growth. It’s all just a few short paragraphs away.

Please subscribe and share with your most rested or restless friend. All are welcome!

Huge thanks to each of you for reading!

And so, we begin….

THE BEST TO-DO LIST APP FOR YOU

In our last edition, we tackled organization. For many of us, a good To-Do List is a key part of how we stay organized. Done well, it helps keep us on track and relieves stress and anxiety.

Done poorly, it can amp up your stress levels. (Again, if you missed it, see Tuesday’s edition for tips on writing strong To-Do Lists)

Like almost everything else these days, there are apps to help you create To-Do Lists. With the complete understanding that some list makers like traditional pen and paper, I know an app approach won’t be for everyone.

But, if you’re thinking about taking your To-Do Lists digital, here’s an article from Tech Radar that goes over a bunch of options to consider.

I’ve used Todoist for years, but again it’s a very personal thing. I’ve recommended Todoist to some people and it just didn’t work for them, and it worked really well for others.

So, no endorsement and it may even turn out that no To-Do List at all is the best approach for you.

Whatever the case, wishing you good luck achieving all your goals!

And now....

MAKING TEAM BUILDING RITUALS BETTER

We’ve all experienced it. You’re at work and asked (required) to participate in an activity designed to encourage team building and bonding, a ritual. Trust falls are probably the most cliched example of this. But, they run the gamut from weekly group coffees to weekend offsites.

Team building exercises are fraught with pitfalls and employees are often less than positive toward them. So, do they work? And if they do, how can we make them better?

We’ll answer both of those questions in a moment. But first, let’s define what a ritual is, how it differs from a habit, and what we get out of rituals.

A ritual is a routine you follow regularly. It differs from a habit because you give it meaning. Chewing gum is a habit. It might be flavorful but it has no particular meaning.

According to Michael Norton, author of The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, rituals are a series of events people create that they must perform in a particular order tied to some larger purpose. As an example, in his research, Norton came across Pianist Svaitoslav Richter who always carried a pink plastic lobster in a little case with him before stepping on stage. Richter felt he couldn’t perform properly without it.

We all have them. And they may be things we do in our personal lives or careers. So, what do we get out of rituals?

Norton says, “We use them to change our emotional states in many different ways, to calm ourselves down, to amp ourselves up, and to connect with others.”

As a sidebar, Norton’s research has shown that simply telling other people to calm down or ourselves to calm down, has the opposite effect. The reason for this is when we can’t calm down, we get even more anxious.

This is where rituals come in AND they work.

In another example from his book, Norton tells the story of an emergency room nurse who, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, often de-stressed at the end of the day by taking a long shower, imagining work anxiety swirling down the drain with the suds.

It was her ritual. And it worked for her.

Now, let’s get back to rituals in the workplace.

With a?2023 Gallup survey?showing that US employees are less satisfied with their jobs and less likely to feel that someone at work cares about them than four years ago, Norton says workplace rituals can be important.?

Employers know this and for years many have used rituals aka teambuilding exercises. Walmart founder Sam Walton started leading workers in morning chants to spell out the name of the retailer after visiting a tennis ball factory in Korea where the workers did a company cheer and calisthenics together every morning.

Hmmmm….. With all due respect to Sam Walton and even being someone who is dedicated to serving any company I’m working for well, being asked to chant the company name every morning would not make me happy.

Again, with all due respect, I’d feel like I was in a cult.

But whatever your individual reaction, according to Michael Norton even less than great teambuilding exercises have been proven to improve performance.

Why?

“Compared to nothing, they do seem to work,” Norton says—even when people don’t enjoy them. “People will tell you they all hated it, but at least they hated it together.”

Interesting….

But of course, bad team-building exercises aren’t ideal. How can you make them better?

Rather than imposing rituals on employees, Norton suggests managers take the lead from team members and have them create their rituals.

So don’t “announce via PowerPoint that we are going to do six claps followed by three shouts at every meeting,” instead make it “a bottom-up activity employees are creating themselves.”

Effective workplace rituals can be as simple as always eating lunch together on a certain day or always concluding meetings by calling out a positive accomplishment by a member of the team.

When these experiences become ingrained, they can become imbued with meaning, Norton says: “The emotions that people can access with rituals are powerful.”

And that, in my humble opinion, is much better than trust falls…

Here's a link to an article that can tell you more.

THE VERY BEST PLACE TO REST AND RELAX

Adam Grant is someone I’ve referred to here before. He’s an author, an organizational psychologist and one of the more consistently interesting reads on Substack. He digs into what makes people tick and so his work is like flame to a moth for me.

With the summer coming up, many of us are planning to take some well-deserved time away to rest up and recharge. But if you’re looking for the best places to relax, what does science tell us we should look for?

We’ve all heard about the benefits of being in the outdoors and seeing trees and other greenery. All of that is true and I highly recommend making time to get out in the natural world as often as possible.

But, the natural world isn’t all equally beneficial to us. According to research Grant cites, the best place to destress is near water. It turns out blue is even more beneficial for us than green.

Recent?experiments?show that after just two minutes of viewing water outdoors, blood pressure and heart rate drop. It's more calming?to look at a lake, pool, or stream than trees or grass.?

Patients?recovering from heart surgery felt less anxious—and requested less pain medicine—after looking at water than a forest. And for dental patients about to undergo surgery, hypnosis didn’t relax them, but viewing an aquarium?did.

And… the wider the body of water the more tranquility it brings.

So, whether you are a beach person or not, love swimming or not, consider being near an ocean or big lake for your next vacation. You’ll feel more peaceful.

For more on why big bodies of water calm us so effectively, read Adam’s post here.

AND HAPPY WEEKENDING!

It is a big summer Thursday and so as we do every week, here is some fun stuff for your your weekend. Enjoy!

MEDIEVAL DOG NAMES

People in olden times had olden dogs as pets too. They gave them weird names.

Some of my favorites are Havegoodday, Lusty, and Mustarde (yes, with an E).

See this link for the full list.

SOME THOUGHTS TO PONDER AT THE POOL

Lao Tzu?(also known as?Laozi)?was one of the most influential philosophers in Chinese history. He's also the author of the?Tao Te Ching, a foundational text of Taoism.

Did I know any of this before reading this article containing 75 of his quotes? No. After all, I’m the product of a very American-centric educational system.

But regardless, if you want some interesting thoughts about life to ponder this weekend, Lao Tzu is your man.

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS!

We’re all done for this week. In this edition, we …. Made team building better, checked out productivity apps, and just in time for summer, figured out the best place to go to rest and recharge.

See you for our next edition on Tuesday when we'll have another great interviewee on tap. And he's someone who's used storytelling very effectively inside and outside of traditional media.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Thanks to you all for reading. Please let us know what you want more or less of. Please feel free to share information you’d like me to pass along to our readers. Also, always happy to feature guest contributors.

And of course, please subscribe and share.

With deep gratitude,

Marco

?