Beating the midnight madness: How to make peace with those nagging, repetitive problems!
Have you ever considered how much productivity you lose to hours spent worrying? How much sleep does it cost you?
Maxon (1999) noted some sixteen years ago that “Workplace stress costs U.S. employers an estimated $200 billion per year in absenteeism, lower productivity, staff turnover, workers' compensation, medical insurance and other stress-related expenses. Considering this, stress management may be business's most important challenge of the 21st century.”
To be sure, stress management remains a hot topic to this day, driving people to yoga classes, running trails, and golf courses in droves. Like many people, I used to lie awake at night, spinning my wheels over work-related problems that I could not begin to solve on my own. Do you do that too?
What if you had a way to figure out which problems are likely to be big, systemic ones? You know— the ones that keep on happening because there is something bigger at play beneath the surface…
That’s what we get from an understanding of fractal patterns in organizations. Fractals are scalable, self-similar patterns that arise from the repeated application of a simple rule or process. Think of patterns in nature (e.g. the branching of veins on a leaf, leaves on a twig, twigs on a branch, branches on a tree trunk… organization charts in large bureaucracies too). If we zoom in and out, we see the same kinds of patterns repeating themselves on multiple scales.
People are part of nature! Groups of people self-organize not because it’s in fashion or because we mean to, but because it is part of our nature to do so. That can generate some interesting behavior patterns, some of which are fractals.
Some problems appear repeatedly over time, happening again and again in small ways and big ways. They can even become an organization’s “signature behaviors” if we watch for a long time, zooming in and out to look at individual, group, and system-wide behaviors. If you listen to the stories people tell, or even ask them where they see these kinds of patterns, it can help you to understand what kinds of things are likely to keep happening. You can begin to sort out the big, important patterns from the things that only happen once or twice or happen repeatedly but with little change from one cycle to the next.
So what??? Why do we care?
Have you ever been to the doctor and received treatment for symptoms that did not address the underlying problem? Now, apply that logic to these kinds of issues. If we focus our talents and problem-solving efforts on those topics that repeat on multiple scales, we can begin to address (or at least accept) systemic problems and… drum roll…. Maybe lose a little less sleep and productivity dealing with the same issues again and again. We tackle the bigger issue instead of just temporarily treating the symptoms.
An understanding of workplace fractals can help you to focus your energy where it counts, for lasting impact— WAY beyond the problem of the day!
I chose warrior II to illustrate this post because it is something that seems to pop up in most yoga classes at one time or another. You can expect that if you practice often, you will see it again and again. Like those fractal patterns in organizations and social groups, it is repeated in ways that are similar but not exactly the same. Depending on the class, you might hold it for a very long time, or simply pass through it in between postures, but it’s a part of vinyasa flow, at least as I have experienced it.
When I first started practicing yoga, I would wish for my time in warrior II to end— thighs burning, mind racing, arms sagging, as I wished for the next posture to come quickly and wondered if anyone had ever dropped dead from achy quadriceps!
Yet over time I learned to deal with it, improving my form and building strength. The point is that I came to understand it as a part of the larger system of yoga that I wanted to be a part of. Once I dealt with warrior II, I could focus my attention on other things more fully.
Is my form perfect? No.
Do I have to check everything and adjust myself all the time? Yes.
Have I made peace with (and learned to enjoy) this posture as something expected, something familiar and good for me? Yes.
When I quit complaining to myself (silently, thank goodness!) about those basic postures, something in me changed. I learned to be at peace with my body and appreciate my own growing strength. My mind settled down a bit and I was no longer surprised when what Charlotte Matsumura calls “good old warrior II” popped up!
So what about you??? What’s your workplace warrior II?
Can you deal with those repeating patterns, since they are likely to keep occurring?
How might acceptance of that help you to let go of the stress and sleep a little better?
Copyright Gly Solutions, LLC 2015
References:
Maxon, Rebecca. 1999. "Stress in the Workplace: A Costly Epidemic." FDU Magazine.
