The ritual of simple things
I just spent a week abroad in a little town called Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I keep reminding myself that I’m going to figure out what “Netherlands” means — is that a forbidden land? A place no one should go? A destination for prisoners, a la Australia? Nether Lands.
After some years of utter teetotalling, I have had coffees and espressos in more bars and restaurants than I could even begin to count. I had them in probably 20 different places in Amsterdam in a single week. What really struck me about the city was that no matter what place you were in — boutique bakery or Dutch dive bar, the coffee more or less always came the same way:
- Ceramic mug or cup of an appropriate size (no chunky oversized nonsense), be that for coffee or espresso or a double
- On a small saucer, with
- A packet of sugar
- A packet of liquid cream
- A spoon
- A cookie
The ritual of taking coffee in Amsterdam became reliably comforting to me. I knew what I was going to get, I looked forward to the things that I was going to get with it, and even if I ordered four coffees in a row from the same bartender, it always came exactly the same. The only change might be the color of mug (which always matched the saucer), white or black.
Ritual is one of those words that means something different to everyone
The word ritual evokes three different things for me when it pops into mind.
- A term used for the standard activities done in scrum
- All the stuff we do in the Catholic church
- Witches and that 90’s movie The Craft with that girl from American History X
It distills down to the simple tasks that we take to get something done and to make it mean something. The things we do reliably and comfortably. I love these things, the reliable few. Perhaps with age I am realizing that “creature of habit” isn’t a pejorative — there’s something to be said for doing the right thing every time.
I have no idea what the history is behind the way coffee is served by the Dutch in Amsterdam. Did the Prince of Orange declare it to be a law? Was it that goof Napoleon? I don’t know if it is a Dutch thing or an Amsterdam thing or just an absurd coincidence. What I do know is that it got me thinking about doing certain things and doing them well.
Because if anything, serving coffee to someone the way I described it above is doing it well. It’s full of small touches and belies a dedication to the experience.
Getting ritual right
This all got me thinking about the ritual of life. For me maybe it’s sitting down with coffee every morning to do writing. This isn’t much different than “routine” but it takes the guesswork out of how I’m going to start my day and how to be productive. The trick is to find that morning ritual that actually makes my day better.
Ritual and routine play a keen part in making work successful. From everything to how to have personal 1:1’s with people, to how to handle weekly all-hands meetings, to just setting up my desk in the morning. People call this “process” or “pattern making” or “frameworks” or whatever else. I like the sound of the word ritual.
ritual, noun: an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.
It puts a personal flavor on it. A process seems and sounds detached from the humanity of an activity. I’m not a robot doing individual inspections of people that I work with — I am doing one-on-ones with people who I legitimately care about. Having a ritual for doing that right is much more important than having a checklist of things to talk about.
Tips for rituals… do you even need tips?
They are just habits, things you do all the time the same way. So, for example, if I am going to start writing on a Saturday morning, I might
- Make a cup of coffee
- Plug in my cell phone on my desk
- Get the blanket that I like
- Get my tablet
- Sit on the chair next to the desk
- Sip my coffee a few times
- Set down my coffee
- Open my tablet
- Do a bunch of meaningless shit for like half an hour before I start frantically writing out of a sense of panic
And there you have it.
