Replacing Work Rules with Work Principles
Sometimes we become so consumed with whether we’re following a rule that we’ve set up for ourselves that we lose sight of the ultimate benefit we wanted to experience through having the rule in the first place.
While rules are of course helpful, sometimes they don’t account for the day to day, mini-fluctuations that are a natural part of our human experience we should be paying attention to. And even though we may have an inclination to deviate from the rules, we can view deviation as a sign of weakness or a lack of dedication.
In this episode, we discuss how instead of filling our day with hard and fast rules, we might benefit from a different approach: establishing a set of work principles.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
Sometimes we become so consumed with whether we’re following a rule that we’ve set up for ourselves that we lose sight of the ultimate benefit we wanted to experience through having the rule in the first place.
So while rules are of course helpful, sometimes they don’t account for the day to day, mini-fluctuations that are a natural part of our human experience we should be paying attention to. And even though we may have an inclination to deviate from the rules, we can view deviation as a sign of weakness or a lack of dedication.
So in this episode, we’ll discuss how instead of filling our day with hard and fast rules, we might benefit from a different approach - which is establishing a set of work principles instead.
Here we go.
Main:
I've been thinking a lot about rules recently, both the kind of rules that we set up for ourselves and also the reasons we decide to set up rules in the first place.
Now I’m not against rules, and I’m not against guidelines and having structure.
But I will tell you as someone who has been training and observing people for years now as they go about setting up rules during their day, I have observed a natural tension that exists when everything in our day is governed by rules.
Here’s the challenge I think we come up against when we move through a day that’s governed completely by rules: instead of staying focused on the end goal that we set up the rules for in the first place, we end up focusing on whether we’re following the rules or not.
In other words, when we set up strict rules for ourselves, sometimes we get so consumed with whether we’re following the rules that we lose sight of the ultimate benefit we wanted to experience from having the rules in the first place.
An in addition to that, if we don’t follow the rules, we as human beings are very expert at spending an inordinate amount of time judging ourselves and beating up on ourselves for not following them.
So let me give you an example from my workday. When I left my big law job and started my own law firm, I set up a rule where I was at my desk and working by 8am every morning. I put this rule in place because I wanted to give myself a sense of structure and discipline.
And for me that worked for a while, but eventually I started to feel a major resistance to being at my desk by 8am every morning. I would wake up at 5:45 or 6am to start my day and I already had this anxiety about this rule I had established, it was a looming deadline, like the moment I woke up this clock was ticking and I could feel a sense of pressure building.
And so instead of enjoying the morning or preparing myself for the day, I was already feeling resentful that I had this timeline in place.
And so I thought well maybe I just won’t make this a rule and I’ll start my day whenever I want to start. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I ended up beating up on myself for not being someone who was capable of following that rule - like why aren’t you more disciplined, other people start work on time, many people start work earlier than 8am. Get your act together. Push through. Toughen up. You must not care enough about growing your business or helping your clients. What about all those stories of successful people you’ve heard about who worked around the clock - they wouldn’t have a problem starting at 8.
And I can remember for months having this internal struggle over following this arbitrary rule that I set up for myself. And there was this natural tension that was created between wanting to follow the rule and this feeling that something wasn’t right about the rule.
In addition to experiencing this myself, now that I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of professionals on how to design their workday, I’ve noticed time and time again that this natural tension presents itself almost universally across the board.
And the more I’ve studied what helps people really move through their workday with a sense of flow and feel fulfilled and have a sense of achievement, I’ve come to believe that for many people setting up an elaborate set of rules may overall actually be detrimental.
And here’s why I think hard and fast rules can sometimes be detrimental: Our bodies and our minds are in a constant state of flux. We’re a mix of how our physical body feels, our emotional state, our mental state, and in addition to all of that we’re taking in and we’re susceptible to a whole bunch of inputs that affect us and that vary day to day - our environment, the weather, noise, light, other people, the changing of the seasons. So there are many things that are constantly fluctuating each and every day that cause us to show up in a unique state every day.
And as much as we think we have the ability to control how we show up - and we do have a lot of influence over how we show up - there are certain things that are ultimately out of our reach that no amount of perseverance could account for.
So one of the challenges with the rigidity of rules is that they don’t allow for and they ultimately block out all these mini fluctuations that we experience in ourselves and that are not only natural, but that we should be paying very close attention to. Those little mini fluctuations - like I’m feeling more tired today, I’m feeling more energized today, I’m feeling less energized, I’m feeling focused, I’m a little sad today, I’ve had a bunch of random interruptions, I’m ultra focused - those mini fluctuations are part of the human experience, they’re the result of universal, natural laws that we’re all susceptible to.
So when we’re so fixated on the rigidity of following a rule, sometimes we end up blocking out things that we may desperately need in the moment to show up at our best in that moment - and the need may be contrary to our rule.
And because we’re so married to the idea of the importance of these rules, we can sometimes ignore the signs that are telling us what we need. And if we start to have this feeling that we should deviate from the rule that we’ve set up - like for example the way I started to feel like I wanted to deviate from my hard deadline of starting at 8am - when we start to feel like we need to deviate, we interpret that as a sign of weakness or incapability. We see it as a lack of dedication, as a lack of discipline. And then we proceed with beating up on ourselves for not being able to just follow the rules live everyone else does - with “everyone else” in quotation marks.
So here’s what I want to suggest to you. What if the desire to deviate from a rule you’ve established is actually you just listening to what you need in that moment?
What if the desire to deviate is a sign that you’ve grown past an old rule that doesn’t serve you anymore or that you don’t need anymore?
What if the desire to deviate from your rules is actually you experiencing a growth point?
What if it's not a lack of discipline but instead it’s your innate wisdom telling you that what you've set up for yourself just isn't working in that moment?
So I want to bring this back to a way that we can reframe the idea of rules.
Instead of rules, I want you to consider whether you might benefit from in some cases adopting “Principles” instead of rules.
A principle is a fundamental truth or beliefs that serve as the foundation for a belief system or behaviors or for a chain of reasoning. It’s a concept that governs your thoughts and actions.
And I like the idea of setting up Work Principles in some instances because it doesn’t have the same rigidity that a rule does.
If you follow a principle, it allows you to place yourself along a spectrum that no matter where you are on that spectrum, you are still following a principle that serves you.
You allow yourself to move back and forth based on the natural fluctuations that we know from experience are going to be a part of who we are forever and always.
It also accounts for the fact that we are constantly learning and growing, and if you're constantly learning and growing, then that also means you likely are constantly transcending rules that you’ve established for yourself. You’re growing past old frameworks, you’re growing past old guidelines that no longer fit you because you’ve outgrown them.
So let me offer an example here before we lose you with just theory. Going back to my example. My work rule was - I start work at 8am everyday, without exception. Eventually I realized that that wasn’t suiting me, and if I looked closely at why I established that rule, that was an arbitrary deadline I imposed on myself without any real meaning.
So then I asked the question - what’s the principle that I want to follow - what’s the reason or the belief I want to use to determine when to start my day? And the answer to that question was - I want to start my day at a time when I’m ready and believe that starting at this point will allow me to have the best day possible and show up at my best.
So I flipped from “I’m starting my day at a certain time” to “I’m giving myself permission to start my day at a point on a spectrum where I feel ready to start.”
So the Principle I adopted was the belief that I would have a better workday if I started at a time when I felt the most ready . So some mornings I want to get started at 7am, and other mornings I start at 9:30. And giving myself that permission allows me to consistently show up at my best, because I’m accounting for those fluctuations.
Now if you’re sitting there thinking “Well I don’t have that much freedom in my day, I have other people I have to report to and a hard start time.” This is not an all or nothing proposition. Sometimes our ability to do things like start or end our day is out of our control. But again, that’s why I like the idea of a spectrum, because it allows for things like other people or circumstances outside our control to enter our lives without judgment, and without causing us to spiral into a poor mindset because we’ve not followed a rule.
Now I want to be very crystal clear on this; this is not a ding on perseverance or structure or the power of repetition when it comes to daily routines and habits. I’m not suggesting that you don’t push through challenges or things that are hard, or that you give up on routines you want to build because you encounter some resistance to them. If you truly believe that starting work everyday at 8am is serving you, then continue to do it.
What I’m inviting you to consider though is whether the rules that you set up for yourself are actually serving you. Do the rules that you’ve put in place actually have a purpose? Or are they just some sort of rule that you observed someone else following at a formative time in your development? Is it a cultural narrative that you think you have to follow in order to be considered productive or in order to be taken seriously? The question is: Is this rule serving you?
And again, if the answer is YES, I need this rule, I thrive on this rule, sometimes it’s uncomfortable but ultimately there’s a net benefit to having it - then keep it.
But if you continually are feeling this sense of misalignment with rules that you’ve set up for yourself, it’s ALSO ok to release yourself from the burden of a rule that no longer fits you, and you can establish a principle that reflects the natural spectrum that you operate on - and that ultimately will help you achieve what you want in the end.
So. What’s our takeaway? If you’re feeling out of alignment with a rule that you’ve set up for yourself, there’s three questions here that I want you to consider.
The first question is; Why have I set up this work rule? What’s the reason?
Going back to my example, I couldn’t think of a good reason why I said I’m going to start at 8am. I think I picked 8am because most people start at 9am and I wanted to overachieve, so I said “I’ll start at 8. I’ll show them that I’m really dedicated - I’m up by 5:45 and I’m at my desk at 8, look at how disciplined and dedicated I am.”
But ultimately, that was a silly reason to set up that rule.
So ask yourself - why have I set up this rule in the first place?
Question 2 is: What’s the ultimate outcome I want to achieve? What’s the benefit to having some structure or a rule in place?
In my example, the ultimate outcome I wanted was to have an incredibly productive day where I was feeling prepared and happy and making progress and showing up at my best. That’s really what I wanted. I didn’t care about starting at 8am - I wanted to have a full, amazing day.
So if you find yourself in conflict with a rule, ask yourself what’s the ultimate benefit you want from that rule.
Then finally question 3 is: Would I benefit from reframing this rule into a principle?
Can you turn what was a rule into a principle that has a purpose behind it, and that has some flexibility that allows you to account for the natural push and pull we experience each day - and that will release you from beating up on yourself if you choose to deviate from a hard and fast rule.
Again, I reframed my rule into the principle that I would start work when I felt like I was ready to start.
On some days was that outside of my control? Yes. But overall, the start of my workday aligns with how I feel that day - which in the aggregate, helps me show up at my best and releases me from the self-judgment I may have felt from breaking an arbitrary rule I established.
So remember: being someone who’s focused on following hard and fast rules really only has value is there’s something truly meaningful behind those rules. And I would encourage you to look at the rules you’ve set up and consider whether there’s a stronger, more purposeful principle you might adopt that has the potential to get you farther.
Go have a great workday.