I mentioned in a previous post that as I gear up for my retirement planning, I want to revisit the idea of rituals and ceremonies (R&C). I don’t think I have given enough thought over the years to using R&C to increase my motivation or commitment, or even to improve my delivery and attainment.

There is a ton of research about various “rituals” in terms of cultural, religious and community groups, and they focus heavily on the particular type of goal that goes with it…teaching responsibility, indoctrinating or inducting someone into a group, promoting kindness or compassion, increasing a sense of self, or more often, increasing the sense of belonging to a group in the form of shared rituals. Those are powerful, but they’re not really what I’m talking about…I’m not dressing in robes, for example, or starting a cult.

Instead, I’m talking more about adding a prescribed frequency or form to an otherwise regular activity or goal. An “enhancement”, if you will, to give it added meaning and thus increase the likelihood of doing it. Some of my reticence in delving too deep into them in the past has been that various articles that combine rituals with goal-setting for personal development often inadvertently confuse different aspects of goal-setting for where the “ritual” should come into play. When they do, the advice isn’t that useful.

Understanding the basics of goal-setting vis-a-vis rituals

For example, there are lots of articles and advice out there for goal-setting and rituals that revolve around three main factors:

1. A ritualized process of making a formal plan
2. A scheduled event formally set and conducted, with a relatively fixed frequency
3. A ceremony to note when you have accomplished it

They take the “plan – do – review” mentality of any sound planning system and add a ritual aspect to each and every element. In my view, the ritual portion only really helps achieve something if it is attached to the “DO” portion of the system (#2), not the first or last phases.

Don’t get me wrong. Planning (#1) is a prerequisite, a primal foundation. And if adding a ritual helps you improve or regularize your planning, I’m all for it. It can be quite enjoyable designing new trackers, setting a schedule for when you’re going to “check-in,” setting up checkboxes, buying dot journals, making layouts, etc. The hidden nuance though is that this sort of ritual reinforces the “planning”, not the “doing”. Anyone can make a great plan and update it daily. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will do the items on the list. To me, it is like the idea of someone deciding that they speed too much, so they set a goal of driving more safely. If you’re going to drive safely, you have to have something to drive…so having the car is a prerequisite, but simply having a car or decorating the interior or adding lights to the underside doesn’t mean you’re going to drive safely. Those “enhancements” have nothing to do with your goal. It just enables you to do the activity at all. Like a to-do list…it enables you to plan what to do, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll actually do it.

For those who want to argue semantics, another way of thinking about it is to make your first item on your to-do list as “updating the list”. If you attach a ritual to it, it is ONLY good for that item. It will help you update the list; it won’t necessarily help you make progress on other items.

Continuing that vein, I believe #3 (review) has the same problem. Tracking is great. In fact, there is an entire mantra of “what gets measured is what gets done”. Except without the “DOING” in the middle, tracking means nothing. Many people set and track goals, like weight loss, with no change. The acts of planning and tracking are, in themselves, necessary but insufficient.

Admittedly, there are half-measures for each that CAN contribute to progress, buried in there, sure, but not enough. Like many hobbies, it’s almost like planning, doing, and tracking are three separate activities. And I’m only interested in the “doing” portion right now, I already know how to plan and track.

I’ve done a deep dive into the various options for rituals, and I’m grouped them into five different “tiers”. Today’s post is just about Tier 1, simple rituals.

Tier 1: Simple rituals

Let’s take the simplest ritual: the checkbox ritual. Within the “plan – do – review” process, you put something on the list and check it off when done. Putting it on the list — in the “plan” phase — is a partial ritual. Deciding it is important enough to put it on the list and reminding yourself that you’re committed to it is a (soft) ritual. You don’t put “breathing” on the list, you just breathe. So, if you put walking around the block on your list, that “ritual” of committing to it enough to put it on your list is a half-measure. When you’ve done it, you get another half-measure by checking it off. It’s a start, but not much of a boost from the ritual. It keeps it top-of-mind, which is why you make the list.

For those with a very strong “list” mentality, putting it on the list may, in fact, be sufficient. There is a danger that people start to make “simpler” lists over time so that they can keep checking things off. Like:

1. Wake up
2. Get dressed
3. Go downstairs
4. Make breakfast
5. Eat breakfast
6. Go to the bathroom
7. Etc.

It’s similar to putting “make / update the list” on the list just so you can check it off and feel momentum. Most people limit themselves to putting things on their lists that are meaningful. “Buy milk” is great for your list of chores for the day, but rarely is it significant enough to consider adding a “ritual” to it so that you do it.

There are exceptions to my mocked list above. For example, if you are newly retired (3y and counting down) or on summer vacation, it can be easy to stay in your PJs. But if you feel you lolly-gag too much, and you want to be more productive, you might easily add “Get dressed” to your list. Or if you always eat pre-processed breakfast or buy your breakfast pre-made at a store or skip breakfast completely (cough), then “make breakfast” could easily make your to-do list as something significant enough that you MIGHT not only put it on the list, you might need help doing that task. Or perhaps if your doctor tells you to drink more milk, adding it to your list might be significant. But, for now, let’s just leave it as “put it on the list, check it off”.

The next three rituals are relatively tied for usefulness, commonality of use, and general methodology — scheduling, duration, or quantity rituals. For writers, they often use a scheduling ritual they nickname “butt in seat” where they say, “Okay, every morning at 9:00 a.m., I am going to sit and write.” They disconnect from the internet, turn off their phones, ignore the doorbell, find a quiet place to write (usually the same place every day) and they put their butt in the seat. And they write. Or people will say, “Every morning at 6:00 a.m., I’m going to go for a run”. Again, rigorous scheduling of the activity. It doesn’t have to be daily, some people will sign up for fitness classes two days a week, like spinning every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:00 p.m. after work. Scheduling is the most common of all rituals. It adds a bit of “planning” to the mix, as it ties into their daily list of activities, blocking off the time to do that activity.

Alternatively, people will go for a duration ritual, although often combined with scheduling. “I’m going to write for a minimum of 2 hours!”. “I’m going to work out for 1 hour!” “I’m going to ride my stationary bike for 35 minutes three times this week!”. Again, fairly obvious, fairly common. As with scheduling, there’s a half-measure from planning that helps, too, as they are tying it into their daily schedule, but not necessarily at a specific time. This is great when something might need to move around (early morning, afternoon, evening) if you have a varied schedule already.

The last one, a quantity ritual, is very similar to the first two. It is basically taking the duration ritual and substituting a quantity element to harness a bit of tracking to the process. “I’m going to do 5 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, 10 burpees, and 2 sets of dead weightlifts.” Or “I’m going to write at least 1000 words”.

The third level of simple rituals is the chain ritual. One of the most “famous” is the so-called Seinfeld chain (although Seinfeld disputes attribution). The idea was that Seinfeld was writing jokes, and he made a “ritual” for himself that every morning, he would sit down and write jokes (for so many minutes or so many jokes). And the goal was to keep the daily chain going as long as he could. If he missed a day? No biggie, he would reset the count, and start again. But the ritual of extending the chain was an extra reinforcement for the goal.

Anyone who has used DuoLingo knows the same schtick. Every day, it asks you to extend your daily training streak. Many games now add various types of chain-ritual-type gamifications to the game, challenging you to extend your “streak” to encourage you to play more often. Puzzle games, in particular, want to see you “learning” (as they claim), which means you’re playing regularly and likely buying power-ups as needed. Many apps regularly add rewards now as you extend your streak, giving you special avatars, badges, or even access to extra areas of the app like a VIP section.

Some so-called goal-setting experts argue that these types of rituals are really not rituals at all. They’re simply quantifying the goals. So they want to argue that a goal of “writing” and a goal of “writing every day at 9:00 a.m.” are really just a nuance of specificity. I disagree most strongly. The goal of writing is the same, but adding a time or quantity or duration changes the goal, or more accurately, changes the “how” of the goal. The ritual changes the delivery. Which is the whole point of adding a ritual.

If you could have done the goal of “writing more” or “writing regularly”, you would have already done it. Quantifying it would make no difference; you would have simply tracked that aspect. Changing the specificity here also changes WHAT and HOW you are going to do it, not just the outcome.

Does this help me?

To be honest, this initial list doesn’t help me much. I already use checkboxes, duration and quantity constantly. I might not use scheduling enough, and although I would LIKE to use chain rituals, my challenge has often been that the easy goals don’t need their help, and the hard ones are difficult to schedule appropriately.

For the scheduling, I’m reminded of the story of the Harvard professor asked to teach his students about time management. He came into the class, bringing along an empty vase and some rocks, gravel, dirt and water. He tells the class that the vase is a metaphor for their schedule. First he puts rocks in, all the way to the top, and asks them if it is full. They all say yes, so then he starts putting gravel in, letting it filter down and settle. Again he asks if it is full, and most say yes, a few are hesitant. He proceeds to add dirt or sand, and it settles all the way down. This time when he asks if it is full, they all say no. So then he adds water, and declares it full. When he asks what this teaches them about time management, one brave soul states that no matter how full your schedule is, there’s always room for more. The professor shook his head and handed his life lesson. “The rocks have to go in first or they won’t go in at all. So, what are your rocks for your schedule? What’s most important?”

The metaphor is strong, and for a long time, I’ve used it for tracking my goals. What are my rocks? The downside though is that my biggest rocks — work and generating income, spending time with Andrea and Jacob — eat up a lot of my day, leaving me little to no time or energy for other rocks, no matter how “big” I think they are or should be. Which is not really true, of course. I just don’t give them sufficient priority to schedule them. I don’t put the other rocks in first.

Meanwhile, I use the simple rituals where it helps, or skip it where it won’t.

However, knowing how it works can also remove the incentive/motivation factor. I can’t often manipulate myself by simply adding a quantity ritual, for example, as I know that 1000 words of bad writing doesn’t really meet any goal. Similarly, for duration. Scheduling rituals can help, if I have control over my schedule and there are no outside forces nudging my schedule out of whack (as I mention above).

But, for now, I have my initial list of five options for tier 1:

1. Checkboxes
2. Scheduling
3. Duration
4. Quantity
5. Chain

On to the next tier…