Thesis: Manage energy, not time.
Stuff to remember:
- To become a corporate athlete, you must work toward the following set of values:
- Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
- Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance renewal expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
- To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
- Positive energy rituals – highly specific routines for managing energy – are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.
- Ways to gain energy
- Eat right. And remember the 80/20 rule. Be good 80% of the time and the 20% is okay.
- Sleep well. The longer and more continuous and later you work, the less effective you are.
- Schedule breaks into your day every 90-120 minutes
- Cardio – interval training
- Strength training
- Restoring emotional energy
- Identify activities you enjoy and schedule them. They are now sacrosanct.
- Push past emotional limits will grow your tolerance and skills.
- Cultivating mental energy
- Be a realistic optimist – this will lead you to joy and productivity
- The key supportive mental muscles include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management, and creativity
- Changing channels mentally sparks creativity
- Maximum mental capacity is derived from balance between expending and recovering mental energy
- Continuing the challenge the brain serves as precaution against age-related mental decline
- Cultivating spiritual energy
- Spirituality is a collection of deeply held values and a purpose beyond our self-interest
- Character – the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values – is key to serve spiritual energy.
- Sustain it by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care
- Embarking on meaning.
- The search for meaning is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history
- The “hero’s journey” is grounded in mobilizing, nurturing, and regularly renewing our most precious resource – energy – in the service of what matters most.
- When we lack a strong sense of purpose we are easily buffeted by life’s inevitable storms.
- Purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal and self to others.
- A negative source of purpose is defensive and deficit-based
- Intrinsic motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides.
- Values fuel the energy on which purpose is built.
- Virtue is value in action.
- Where are you at now?
- Facing the truth frees up energy and is the second stage, after defining purpose, in becoming more fully engaged.
- Avoiding the truth consumes great energy and effort.
- We deceive ourselves to protect our self esteem.
- Truth without compassion is cruelty.
- A common form of self-deception is assuming that our view represents the truth, when it is really just a lens through which we choose to view the world.
- It is a danger and delusion to become too identified with any singular view of ourselves.
- Accepting our limitations reduces our defensiveness and increases the amount of positive energy available to us.
- Taking action
- Rituals serve as tools in service to whatever goal we choose to focus our energy on
- Rituals are a means to exercise our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of life
- The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self control draws on the same limited resource.
- We can offset our limited will and discipline by building rituals that become automatic as quickly as possible, fueled by our deepest values
- Most important role of rituals is to ensure effective balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal in service of full engagement
- The more exciting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be
- Precision and specificity are critical dimensions of building rituals during the thirty- to sixty-day acquisition of ritual period.
- Trying NOT to do something rapidly depletes our limited stores of will and discipline
- To make lasting change we must build serial rituals, focusing on one significant change at a time.