Harvard Business Review recently published an article on the significant impact of pre-task rituals on performance in stressful situations. The authors likened the routines to what athletes use before their events, citing numerous examples that illustrate the positive results. The experimenters discovered that, having performed pre-task rituals before engaging in stressful situations, participants exhibited reduced anxiety and increased performance.

I’m not suggesting you paint your face and do your lucky dance, but I am suggesting you develop a brief ritual that has relevance to your performance. For instance, how about:
• Visualizing yourself finishing the situation as a winner and saying: “That was a great conversation, as difficult as it was.”
• Calming your mind with positive and energizing thoughts: [Deep breath] I’m prepared and ready to go.
• Reciting an inspirational quote, prayer or literary passage: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
• Giving yourself a good “talking to” that you are capable and competent: STOP! You do this every month and you survived. Now get going!

For me, I really dislike and get stressed over the basic bookkeeping tasks that are required on a weekly and monthly basis. Not my thing and I do as little as necessary. So my routine is to set a time on my calendar to get everything ready: organize receipts, download bank data, etc. When completed, I stop, even if I feel like I’m on a roll and want to continue. Instead, I wait for the next day or two and schedule the actual execution of tasks. When I do this, things go so much smoother, I’m not overwhelmed and I don’t avoid or procrastinate. When I don’t do this, I’m a disorganized mess.

Any time you experience anxiety or dread, like before a presentation, preparing for a difficult conversation or engaging in an undesirable task, a ritual will focus your attention and your execution will improve. The only thing to do now is to develop your routine and stick with it.