Professional Timehop: why nostalgia is good for your career

From the Ancient Greek nóstos (meaning ‘homecoming’) and álgos (meaning ‘pain’ or ‘ache’), nostalgia was first attributed to homesick soldiers and classified by medics as a ‘disease’.

These days, psychologists say that affectionately recalling the past can have many benefits. Great news for the 15 million users of Timehop, an app that greets you each morning with a memory from your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feeds past – a personal ‘on this day in history’ plucked from your own digital archives.

 

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

Peter Drucker, Management Expert

 

But while we might get a fuzzy feeling from looking at pictures from that milestone birthday party or impromptu night out with friends, can reflecting on past work experiences really bring career benefits? We explore why building a professional time capsule might be the ticket to future success.

 

Getting nostalgic brings out your competitive streak

The inspiration for Timehop was in fact a go-karting computer game, which allows players to race against their previous best in time trials. In turn it inspired users: “We had one guy who saw [on the app] that he had run five miles a year ago, so this year on this day he ran six. We saw people being inspired to beat their ghost, their past selves,” the app’s founder told Business Insider.

This drive to beat past performance is backed up by science. In one study, researchers asked participants to cycle as hard as they could for 4,000 metres. Later, participants were given the same instructions but were able to race against an avatar of their previous ride. What they didn’t know was that the avatar was actually going faster than their previous ride.

The experiment saw participants ride right alongside their avatars, significantly faster than their previous maximal efforts.

The implication is that people are poor predictors of their best efforts and may, when pushed, surpass their own expectations; the upshot that if you’re lacking motivation or unsure of your next challenge, reflecting on past accomplishments can relight that fire in your belly to do something even more extraordinary.

 

Charge up your self-confidence with a blast from the past

Various studies have shown that recalling happy times can supercharge your self-esteem.

 

Create a Journal of achievement:

“If you’re feeling like a failure… like you don’t know if your life has any purpose [or] if what you’re doing has any value, you can reach into this reservoir of nostalgic memories and comfort yourself,” says a researcher from one study. “We see nostalgia as a psychological resource that people can dip into to conjure up the evidence to assure themselves they’re valued.”

 

Connect your past with who you are now for optimum benefits

There is one obvious potential pitfall of professional nostalgia: viewing past work experiences and relationships with rose-tinted glasses stops you focusing on the here and now, maybe even diminishes the learning from less positive experiences.  

“People who see each good experience as permanently enriching are more likely to get a mood boost. But a person who mainly focuses on the contrast between past and present damns every good experience with the attitude that nothing in the future can ever live up to it,” writes Psychology Today.

When you’re looking through your journal of achievement, avoid focusing on how amazing everything was then, how brilliantly you got on with your boss, or how invigorating you found your work. Focus instead on how that experience enabled you to be who you are in the present day.

 

Nostalgia reminds you to build positive memories for the future

“Why watch new movies when the ’80s clearly had all the best films? Why go to new restaurants when the old ones have the perfect menu? Why find a new band to love when it seems like your old favourites are all going on reunion tours?” writes Lifehacker. “If nostalgia acts as a store of positive memories to call back on when you’re feeling down, you have to create new ones before that storage runs out. It’s easier to fall back on old times.”

The same principle applies to your professional life. If you spend all your time dwelling on the amazing camaraderie you enjoyed in a former team, you might not put the effort into building relationships in your new workplace. If you continue to go to the networking evening where the same familiar faces show up each time, you might turn a blind eye to new invitations.

What that ultimately requires is a break from your comfort zone. Be motivated by the great service you’ll be doing your future self and begin saying yes to new opportunities – you never know what memories you’ll be creating in the process (psychologists call this ‘anticipatory nostalgia’).

 

Reflection helps you plan

Users of Timehop’s forerunner, an app called 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, quickly cottoned on to how their present day usage would resurface in the future, and a strange trend emerged: they started checking in to leave notes for their future self.  

The vast majority of people however, particularly those aged 28 to 40, prefer reminiscing about the past than they do thinking about their future needs. By connecting the two, say experts, you can use your reflection time to gain some valuable insight about what you want from your career, whether that’s a new job in the future, or a successful performance review in the months to come.

“January is often the time for employees’ annual appraisals. For a lot of people, this will be a wasted opportunity… They will undersell their achievements and skills, mainly because they haven’t sat down and thought about them properly,” cautions The Guardian.

 

Ask yourself these questions to connect reflection and future career planning

1. What have I achieved?

List everything that has seen you grow and develop.

2. What do you want?

Past experiences have led to where you are now; the experiences you live next will take you wherever you want to go. Think about what opportunities you need to create.

3. Who can I talk to?

A partner, friend or mentor might add further reflection and spark new ideas for what could come next.

Source: The Guardian

 

Nostalgia combats the ‘recency effect’

More than one in five employees (22%) say their annual performance review doesn’t look at the entire working period; instead, their boss focuses only on recent successes and failures. It’s what psychologists call ‘recency bias’.

This is where spending some time reflecting on the distant as well as the recent past can reap rewards. “Managers aren’t superheroes who can see and remember every little thing you did in the year,” says Dominique Jones, Vice President Human Resources, Halogen Software. You, on the other hand have access to a wide range of resources that can showcase all your main successes come review time.

Turn detective – rummage through your inbox archive to jog your memory of all the projects that have challenged and stretched you since your last appraisal; flick through notes made in 1-2-1s; look through slideshows that accompanied presentations you delivered; think back over networking events you attended and what was going on for you around those times.

 

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