An alarm pierces the quiet of the morning. You raise your arm instinctively to shut it off, eyes flickering open. For a split second, you don’t know where you are, what you are. Except that you are being rudely interrupted.
Good morning sunshine, the Universe says. You growl. You are really fucking tired.
Not for the first time in your life, you have had a bad night’s sleep. Irritated, you pull your body out of bed, and stumble to the kitchen to make the first of many coffees. As you wait for it to brew, you castigate the Universe.
“Honestly,” you grumble. “Why me? Why can’t you let me have a good night’s sleep for once?”
“Am I not working hard enough for you?”
Unfortunately, you don’t hear when it answers back:
“But are you?”
Watch your step
In the board game, Snakes and Ladders, there are three kinds of tiles: neutral, snakes and ladders. Players roll a die and move their pawns according to the number they roll. If a player lands on a neutral square, nothing happens. If they land on a ladder, they climb up the board. But if they land on a snake? Then they fall down the board.
When it comes to performance, there are also neutral, ladder and snake moves. These are small, daily choices that can seem inconsequential but have the potential to dramatically swing a day, week, or even month, into a positive or negative direction. Habits like going to bed late, working out in the morning, or getting snarky with your spouse when you come home from work. Most people pay little attention to these tiles, moving about their days ignorant to the nonlinear impact one can have if stepped upon. Yet these little moments matter.
Those interested in long-term excellence need to manage them well.
A tale of two athletes
Consider the case of two competitive athletes, Sarah and Conor.
Sarah gets up every morning and follows the same routine: she eats a breakfast of toast and eggs, drinks her black coffee, and rests in a moment of peace. She then gets to work and trains.
Conor also follows his routine every morning. Unlike Sarah, however, this routine includes being on his phone first thing. An important CEO, he feels the pressure to read his email and watch the news. So, while Sarah blocks the external world before she trains, and is in a neutral headspace 95% of the time, Conor’s energy is open for influence. This isn’t a problem on most days. On occasion, however, he receives some dysfunctional email beforehand and his workout suffers or is skipped entirely.
Even though Sarah and Conor are equally motivated, Sarah’s consistency is better because she intentionally protects her energy prior to training, while Conor keeps stepping on snakes.
How to conduct a pattern audit
When it comes to boosting performance (athletic or otherwise), we’ve all heard that consistency is king. We know that we need to “improve 1% every day” and to stay on our game. What is less clear is how to actually go about doing this. Performance thought leaders often conveniently leave this part of the discussion blank.
One way to improve your consistency is to become hyper realistic about what is throwing you off. This means knowing exactly what snakes you are stepping on and which ladders are critical to protect. The way to do this is by conducting a pattern audit.
A pattern audit is a process by which we journal daily patterns in detail. The idea is to record enough data, for a long enough period of time, to be able to detect correlations, if not causality. Then, empowered with insight, we can make requisite changes.
Here’s how you can conduct a pattern audit:
1. Start by identifying the key drivers of performance.
Begin by listing out the key factors that drive your performance. If you are an athlete, for example, you might determine that training quality (hours and intensity), nutrition and getting 8-10 hours of sleep per night are essential to your success.
2. Select one key area to focus on, and then track your patterns around it.
For example, let’s say that you want to sleep better. In order to determine what’s driving your sleep, you might buy a journal, a wearable device (like a whoop or Oura ring) and then track:
- how much and when you eat;
- caffeine consumption;
- how many hours of sunlight you are getting;
- whether or not you are supplementing with Vitamin D;
- bed time;
- when you stop working;
- when you shut off the screens;
- whether you are setting an alarm;
- how dark the room is;
- whether you wear earplugs
3. Identify the choices that trigger positive or negative cascades.
Once you have the data, you can start to spot patterns. For example, you might conclude that we aren’t getting enough sleep because you are working too late into the night. Or, perhaps, you might realize we sleep better when the temperature of the room is cooler than 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
When identifying these patterns, it’s worth remembering that these are hypotheses we are dealing with. Many of the audits we conduct will occur in complex, adaptive and nonlinear systems where there are many potential confounding variables present. Causality is not always clear in such situations. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t experiment – we just need to treat our conclusions as best guesses.
4. Seek external expertise.
During or after the experimentation period, it’s wise to solicit external expertise. As informed as we might be, we are rarely the subject matter experts on the patterns in our lives that we need to optimize. Moreover, even when we are the subject matter expert, we may be too close to the problem to see it clearly. This is why it’s so useful to bring in another set of eyes. Our objective should be to come up with the best possible ideas — not the best possible ideas we came up with ourselves.
5. Design your system to eliminate snakes and protect the ladders.
Having conducted an audit and established your patterns, it’s time to design a system that eliminates snakes and protects the ladders in your life. As you take action to create this system, make sure you integrate some method of continuous tracking. Measuring critical habits is essential to managing them.
Control what you can control
We all have times in our lives when we are inconsistent in our execution. Sometimes the reason for a disruption is outside of our control – sometimes it is entirely on us. Most of the time, we are dealing with a mixture of factors we can control and factors we can’t. Ultimately, however, the most consistent performers in the world follow the vein of Picard and make it so, regardless of circumstances. They simply do not tolerate excess disruption to their work. In practice, this means they care about detail.
Eliminate your snakes, protect your ladders, and watch your consistency improve.
