Simplifying my week

I find if I am juggling too many different things in a single workday, it affects my focus, my energy and my performance.

 This is especially on days when I am constantly switching between different topics and tasks.

 So, I have tried to simplify my work week by intentionally having a theme for each workday...Mondays are creative days, Tuesday through Thursday is for delivery, and Friday is for administrative tasks.

Of course, many days deviate from this ideal, but even having this guideline simplifies my weekly planning and execution. When I am not sure what to work on, I refer to the theme for that day.  

 And the days I keep it simple and stay on theme, I find that I utilize my time more effectively, stay focused for longer and end the day with more energy for a workout or a home cooked dinner.

 What are some ways you can simplify your weekly planning and execution, so you apply your focus and energy on what matters most?

Wellbeing Canvas

Essential wellbeing practices for resiliency and performance in challenging times

In 2010, after facing professional and personal challenges stemming from the Great Recession, I began a deep exploration into mindfulness and wellbeing practices, by doing silent meditation retreats and studying with global leaders to understand the science, skills and practices that drive human wellbeing and performance.

The Wellbeing Canvas is a milestone in that journey and captures the key elements of wellbeing in a simple reference and one-pager worksheet that can be used to plan and execute on your wellbeing goals and is based on the essential wellbeing practices supported by science.

The Wellbeing Canvas includes elements for both body and mind and ensures we balance stress and recovery. The canvas increases wellbeing awareness, choices and results and is most effective when used on a regular basis.

Download the Wellbeing Canvas worksheet here

Recovery

Elite athletes work harder than anyone, and to make this possible they focus a great deal of thought and effort on: recovery.

They plan rest periods between intense sessions. They eat and sleep in specific patterns, to speed their recovery and thus make possible even higher performance levels. It’s pretty near impossible today to compete at elite levels and ignore recovery.

And yet, business professionals and their employers barely think about recovery. This is especially true at the top firms, where long hours and intense effort are little more than table stakes.

How can this be? How is it possible that humans only need recovery time in athletic endeavors?

The truth, of course, is that the only way to maintain the highest levels of human performance is to follow a regimen that includes recovery time. By failing to recognize this fact, many in business accept pretty good performance and label it as something better than it is. This is a disservice to all: clients, colleagues, the employer and each individual.

It’s time to recognize that top performance is the result of both effort AND recovery time, not just effort.

Transformation

What’s the human cost of 12-18 month enterprise transformation projects? These are uniquely grueling assignments that bring together professionals with a diverse range of backgrounds and skills.

They are on a roller coaster ride that will require resiliency from both the team as well as the individual.

Change happens when individuals change. Large-scale change happens as the relationships between individuals change. If you skip the relationship part, you make it much harder to effect change.

The relationship shifts must start WITHIN the team that is driving the transformation efforts.

Some of the questions new transformation teams should tackle in their formation stages include:

—How am I personally being asked to change and grow?
—What are the most substantive things my colleagues should know about me? How can others support me?
—How can I best understand and empathize with people who are different from me? How can I support them?
—How does our team seek to interact with each other? What does it mean to be “us”?
—What practices support living our team values when the going gets tough?

When you start with the relationship aspects of a new team, you increase the odds of that team succeeding.

Learning Mindset

I recently (November 2019) did a Spartan obstacle course race for the first time, after constructing and following a three-month training plan. Over that period, I replaced my Can I Do This? mindset with a What Can I Learn? mindset.

Can I Do This? sets you up for failure; it’s like training with a sword hanging over your head.

What Can I Learn? frees you up for growth and advancement. In my case, it got me thinking, “No matter what happens, I will create a baseline from which I can grow in the future.”

One thing I learned is that your mind plays tricks on you. For example, I learned that my preconceptions could be pretty off target. Others told me to watch out for the seven-foot inverted wall, but I ended up clearing it in one swing. That was a lot of stress for nothing.

I was very pleased with my performance… until the last three obstacles. By that time, I was pretty spent, and missed my first attempt on each of them.

Afterwards, I was eager to continue my learning and wanted to sign up for another Spartan event three weeks from now.

My wife convinced me it might be a better idea to train some more, before diving into another learning experience. Smart tip.

Self-awareness

There’s a lot of talk these days about self-awareness, but most of it falls short of what’s really necessary to make a significant difference in your life. To do that, you need very high resolution self-awareness, which is hard to maintain when your attention is distracted or externally focused.

To move in this direction, try this 10 x 10 exercise. For ten days in a row, write in a journal for ten minutes each day. Focus on your core values. Instead of simply writing general thoughts, do this:

1. Ask yourself what thoughts come into your mind when you talk about a particular value? How have you expressed your values in life, or failed to do so?

2. Describe the way your body feels when you talk or think about that value. Do you feel more or less energy? Are you excited or nervous?

3. Review your writing for insights, and in doing so, each day you will dig a little deeper.

You don’t have to write about one value and then move on. It’s okay to focus on one value for several days in a row, being sure to stop and literally examine how you feel as well as what you think.

Developing the skill of paying attention to your thoughts and to your feelings will allow you to form a high resolution level of self-awareness.

Achievement Triangle

“Most athletes are ready to make an effort in a race. Few are ready to carry their efforts through months or years of training and racing.”

So says coach Joe Vigil, who has been inducted into 11 Halls of Fame after coaching incredibly successful track and field athletes.

Most people want to be comfortable. They want success, but not necessarily the sacrifice that creates it. This, more than anything else, is what limits our success. Not talent or desire, but our unwillingness to step out of our comfort zone.

This includes me. I have been deep inside my comfort zone for too long.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to run a marathon once a week. It might be as simple as putting yourself out there in a much bolder way.

In 2020, watch for me to do just that.

Image credit: Coach Joe Vigil