Blog

A few ideas on health, fitness, habits and life.
09 Jul 2020
Personal Improvement Permalink

The weeks and days are just a problem to be solved

July 9, 2020

Sometimes the things that are best for you, aren’t the most enjoyable. That’s exactly how I’m feeling about my weekly and daily planning at the moment.

I spend a couple of hours on a Sunday, planning the week ahead. And then I spend about 15 – 20 mins each evening, planning the following day. It’s a lot of time, and isn’t easy. I don’t tend to look forward to it – or particularly enjoy doing it. So, why would I spend 4-5 hours a week doing something that I don’t enjoy?

Well, the value is indisputable. When I do it, I am intentional and focused. I spend more time on important things, and get far more done (easily 2 or 3 x more). And there’s no doubt about it, I am way happier. Even when you factor in the difficulty and enjoyment of doing it – it’s a gigantic net positive.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel like this about my planning? Surely if it’s so good for me, I would feel like I want to do it? I came to the conclusion that it’s because it’s actually some very intense problem solving.

There are a lot of decisions to make. Firstly, where will I spend my time? (and therefore not spend my time) Even when I’ve decided this, I have to decide what specific actions to do. And again, if I choose to do something, it’s at the expense of something else. Everything feels like a constant trade off.

Once I’ve made those decisions, I start to piece the week together. This involves a lot of moving things around to fit. I have to juggle my existing commitments with the extra things I want to do. Some things need to be done on set dates, and others have dependencies.

And then about half way in, I will realise it’s not possible to fit everything in. I then have to go back and strip some things out – which is even more decisions. It’s like working on a difficult jigsaw puzzle.

Daily planning is a similar effort. Luckily, some of those decisions are already made for me from the weekly planning. But, it still involves having to work out some priorities, decide how I will use my early mornings, time boxing the day, and figuring out the balance between work and everything else.

And lastly, I’m constantly wrestling with my expectations, and the temptation to drift into goal setting. Even though I know these get me into trouble, they still creep in. I’ve built up a good level of self awareness for when these things creep in, but it’s still something I have to notice and not get sucked into.

As you can see, planning weeks and days is difficult, problem solving work. Planning a week will often leave me feeling exhausted afterwards. But this level of discipline actually gives me freedom. It’s a huge relief to know everything is well thought out, and that I’m in control. The right things are in front of me, I just have to get on with it.

P.S. Here’s a guide to how I plan my week – How to plan a killer week.

P.P.S Here’s a guide to how I plan my work week – How to be focused and effective at work

[wpcode id=”7450″]

02 Jul 2020
Discipline, Habits Permalink

The counter-intuitive way to get freedom

July 2, 2020

It’s rare that I read an article and think – I wish I had written that. That’s exactly how I felt after reading Wise People Have Rules For Themselves by David Cain.

I agree with every single word.

It sounds odd to say ‘discipline equals freedom’ – but it does. It’s counter-intuitive. When you set rules for yourself that you know are good for you, it’s actually liberating. It’s a huge relief. You no longer have to flip flop between things that work, somewhat work and don’t work. You lean in towards what works for you. You live a life on your terms.

I’d even go as far to say, if you don’t have many rules for yourself, it’s because you haven’t experimented enough with different ways to live your life. I think this is why people tend to enjoy life more when they get older. When you’re younger, life is a range of options and you haven’t had enough time to figure out what works for you. As you get older, you tend to settle into what works for you.

How do you find out what works for you? Well, for a start you have to develop a philosophy and mindset to be the best version of yourself. You have to try different things – and for a long enough period (usually 30 days does the trick). Sometimes it involves stopping something. Sometimes doing something new, or simply just something different.

You then have to notice how these changes impact your life, and make a decision on how that becomes a part of your life. Or, not.

Here are some rules I have for myself, which make my life better:

  • I eat during an 8-hour window, and then fast for the remaining 16 hours. So, I skip breakfast, and eat between 12.00PM and 8.00PM
  • I drink a maximum of 3 cups of caffeine a day, and they must be before noon.
  • I eat paleo 80% of the time (this is my most challenging rule to stick to) I drink 2 litres of water each day
  • I wake up early (usually for 05.00)
  • My mornings also follow the same structure – Breathe, Think and Do.
  • I spend about 2 hours each weekend, planning the following week
  • I spend about 15-20 mins every evening, planning the following day
  • I finish every shower with 30 secs of cold water
  • Ella and I spend 10-15 mins every Sunday, syncing our diaries for the next couple of months.

I’ve settled on the above rules through a lot of experimentation. And from there, realising that there is a significant net positive to my life by sticking to these rules.

I wish I could say I have 100% consistency with these rules, but that’s not realistic. Some are easier than others to stick to. For example, I don’t have to think about skipping breakfast, or limiting my caffeine to 3 cups before noon. But, sticking to paleo, and drinking 2 litres of water every day – that’s a bit more hit and miss.

I’m experimenting with alcohol at the moment. As of today, I haven’t had a drink for 25 days. My life is SO much better without it. I’m leaning towards giving up forever. Perhaps I will only have a drink on very special occasions, and limit it to three drinks. I’m still thinking about that.

Now, you may still be thinking, that’s a very rigid way to live your life. Loosen up, have some fun. And that’s a valid point.

A good friend sent me a great article the other day – Let Yourself Be Unproductive. At Least for a Little While. I agree with alot of it.

I do think it’s important to have periods where you let go of some, or even all rules. In fact, just to let go of trying to be productive. There’s absolutely a place for building in periods of no structure – where you let go of calendars, tasks lists and rules. And actually, this is often necessary to keep a good balance. It also can be critical to break through key phases of life, or to recharge from intense periods.

Balance is the key word there. Most people are much happier when they have their life well organised as the baseline. More often than not, it’s better to have rules, and a system for how to live your life. That’s your foundation. And from there, you can build in periods of rest and downtime where you see fit.

As I said at the beginning, I wish I had written Wise People Have Rules For Themselves. But, I’ll settle for being able to share it with you, and share some of my rules 🙂

[wpcode id=”7450″]

25 Jun 2020
Life Permalink

Five things that have helped me be effective at work in lockdown

June 25, 2020

Lockdown has been very challenging for me. It’s taken me much longer to adapt to working from home than I would have expected.

I’ve struggled with a lot of things – video call fatigue, work / life balance, focus and motivation – to name a few. If I’m honest, I lost my edge at times. I feel like I’ve had the least impact I’ve had over a three month period for a long time.

That said, over the last few weeks I’m getting into a much better place with it. I’ve been reflecting on what’s helped the most, and five things came to mind:

Lowering my expectations

I got very frustrated in the first half of lockdown. I wasn’t able to operate at the level I was used to – perhaps, about half as effective. I felt detached from what was going on.

It’s really important for me to feel like I’m being effective. I have to be able to see how I’m having a significant and obvious impact. And this kinda slipped away from me.

I got frustrated and was very hard on myself. It took one of my colleagues to remind me that it was unrealistic to perform at the same level. Our whole world had been turned upside down after all, and it was going to take some time to settle into it.

Immediately, something clicked into place for me. From that moment on, I lowered my expectations and was kinder to myself. That helped me see things more clearly, and I was able to more calmly re-organise myself.

The balance between meeting, doing and thinking

Before lockdown started, my week was beautifully organised. There was an almost perfect balance between meetings, doing and thinking – which I think is essential for any manager to operate at peak. This was no fluke, I designed it that way.

As soon as we went into lockdown, it went out the window. Meetings expanded to fill most of the space in the week. I found myself on back to back video calls, with hardly any time to do anything – let alone space to think.

I fell behind on things and made some rushed, poor decisions. Urgent topics dominated my day. I found it harder to spot problems heading our way, and felt super overwhelmed.

Only recently have I been able to get this balance back – and WHAT a difference it’s made. I’m back to feeling in control, and on top of things. I’m spending more time on important things, and less on urgent things. I’m still in alot of meetings – but, I now have time to get stuff done, and also some space to think. How did I get that balance back? That leads me onto the next thing…

Re-organising my calendar, and my time

When I was at my most overwhelmed, I decided to take a step back and make some ruthless changes to my calendar. I’ve always been very good at managing my time, but my old system wasn’t dealing with lockdown very well.

I went back to basics, and re-thought everything. I stopped some 121’s, and reduced others in frequency and length. I stepped out of some recurring group meetings, and decided others were now optional. I went back to an old system of reserved time blocks for interviews.

The above gave me a LOT more space straight away. At the beginning of each week I’m now much more disciplined about getting my calendar exactly how I want it. It has to be the right ratio of meetings, doing and thinking. I start by getting my meetings how they need to be. I then time box two or three blocks which I reserve for focused work. After that, I need to see enough free space around the meetings and focus blocks. This gets used for spontaneous things, or as space to think.

This week was a perfect example. Monday morning was full of meetings, with the afternoon mostly free. Tues was back to back meetings (rare, but I had a lot going on). I had the entire morning Weds for focused work, and the afternoon for meetings. Thurs is off (I work four days a week). And Friday is about 2 or 3 hours of meetings, and the rest would have been a mix of focus work, and free space, but is now a holiday (more on this below). I’ve felt great the whole week, and already feel confident the week will end well.

Shutting down

Over the last few years I’ve gotten very good at being on when I’m on, and off when I’m off. I leave the house, commute to work, and then double down on work. When I’m done, I commute home, walk in the house, and then my laptop rarely comes back out. I have no work emails, messengers or calendars on my phone. This structure helped create a separation between the work and my own life.

Lockdown disrupted that pattern. I found myself working later, and also into the evenings. Part of it was because I no longer had a clear separation between work and the rest of my life. The other part was, I was feeling overwhelmed and my expectations were running away with me. So, I compensated by trying to work more (never sustainable, and usually always a bad idea).

It took awhile for me to lower my expectations, and re-organise my calendar and time to get into a better place. I also took some of Cal Newport’s advice about having a shut down ritual. I am trying to be more conscious about setting the time at which I will stop working when I plan my day out. At the end of the day I try and clear any unread emails, and then I shut my laptop.

This is still a work in progress. I completely failed at that last night. I opened my emails to check on something about 8PM, and from there got sucked into some other email topics. I ended up doing that until about 9.30PM. I wish I hadn’t because some of the frustration of those topics stuck with me and I found it much harder to sleep. I knew when I was doing it, it was stupid. But, I did it anyway and and then felt stupid afterwards 🙂

That said, I’m much better than I was a few weeks ago, and it’s helped me get most of my evenings back.

Walking calls

This seems to be something a lot of people I’ve spoken to have found useful. There’s something about being on video calls that is draining. It also tends to keep you in the same spot for a long time.

I started to take some of my meetings on my phone, and whilst I walked outside. This broke up the day. It got me moving, some fresh air, and away from video for a bit. The days I do this and far less exhausting.

Don’t try and multi-task looking after a five year old, and doing work

If you’re on the ball today, you’ll notice this is the sixth thing 😉 I couldn’t resist.

When you try to multitask parenting and work, all that happens is you do both badly. My heart goes out to people that are forced into this because of their situation. Ella and I feel very grateful and lucky. We’re both continuing to work and have income. Ella works part-time, so has been able to handle the bulk of the home schooling. She’s also a teacher, so she has a leg up on most people. I really do appreciate how lucky we are.

But, there have been times when Ella has had to go to work, and I tried to juggle both. It left me super frustrated at doing neither well. I rushed my work, and neglected Fearne (my daughter).

Fearne’s school shuts down at midday on a Friday, so they can deep clean in the afternoon. Ella works Friday, so I have been on childcare for the last two Friday afternoons. I’m also on the hook for the next 4 weeks.

I tried to juggle both in the first week, and it was a car crash. I’ve since booked my Friday afternoons off as holiday for the next four weeks. That way, I can just focus on having a nice time with Fearne. A far better way of going about it!

I hope you find these useful. If you’ve found something particularly useful, feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

[wpcode id=”7450″]

18 Jun 2020
Personal Improvement Permalink

The thing about hard things

June 18, 2020

It started off easy, but it was about to get much harder.

I jumped on the assault airbike and got my first twenty calories done. I held a fast (ish pace, which took about a minute.

Next up was Ella. She had fifteen calories to do, which also took about a minute. Whilst one of us worked, the other rested. So, we both worked for roughly a minute, followed by a minute of rest.

Before we started, I wrote ‘500 calories’ on the chalkboard. Next to it, I also put ‘1000 calories?’. We had to hit at least 500 total calories to complete the workout – 1000 calories as a stretch goal.

I was anxious before we started. But, I figured I can do most things for a minute. I mean, it’s just a minute – followed by a minute’s rest. It’s going to take a while, but it won’t be that hard.

My 20 calories slowly got harder and harder. They went from easy, and not thinking too much about them – to actually needing to have a strategy for them. Jump on, and push hard for a few seconds to start with (gets the revolutions per minute up quickly). Hold the first 10 calories at a set pace. Then, another short burst for a few calories, followed by seeing the rest of the calories out at the set pace. Towards the end of the workout, I had to put my head down for the last few calories, giving it my last effort to complete them. VERY different to the first set.

It was the same for my rest periods. They started off with me standing around and slowly getting my breath back. I quickly had to come up with a strategy to recover and get my head in the right place for my next go on the bike. 15 secs of leaning against the wall, letting my breath come down. A quick sip of water, and then 30 secs of walking around. Then, about 15 secs of getting my mind ready for another minute.

We hit 1,000 calories in 73 mins, 21 seconds. It’s one of the hardest workouts I’ve done – second only to a 2K row.

I tried to convince myself it was OK to stop when we hit 500 calories. I did that about twenty more times on the path to finally hitting 1,000 calories. Each time the thought popped into my head, I reminded myself of how great I would feel when finished.

And that’s exactly what happened. I felt really good about myself immediately after finishing. It lasted for the rest of the day. I did something hard, which by the way – I tried to talk myself out of a lot of times. I was as proud of my mental toughness, as I was the physical accomplishment. I proved I could push through something very hard and finish it.

I go through some of the same process at work. I’m often involved in things that are ambitious and hard. I help teams and people change direction, and do things differently. It takes a lot of convincing, and over-communicating key messages. Plenty of difficult conversations. It’s super fast paced. And it takes an enormous effort to build momentum, after which holding onto it can be fragile and difficult.

Why do I bother doing it? I could find easier work. Money hasn’t been a key motivating driver for quite a while.

I do it for much the same reasons as why I pushed through the air bike workout. It’s rewarding to do difficult things.

It might feel like a slog at times when you’re in it. But, that’s often the path you have to go through to achieve something meaningful. That’s where the growth and learning happens. That’s where you continue to build mental toughness, confidence and resilience. And that’s how you get results you’re proud of.

So, the question is – how often are you doing physically and mentally hard things that make you feel uncomfortable? Is it enough?

[wpcode id=”7450″]

30 May 2020
Health Permalink

Whoop

May 30, 2020

It’s been a long time since I’ve loved a product as much as Whoop. It’s helped opened my eyes to the fine balance between pushing myself hard, resting and recovering.

It’s also helped me be far more self aware of where my body is at, and what I can do to influence things.

Let’s rewind back a bit (I’ve been wearing a whoop band for about 45 days now).

It all started because I wanted to better understand how I was sleeping. As usual, I spent a lot of time looking at what products were on the market. I started to get a feeling that Whoop was one of the leaders in this space.

It did everything I wanted. It tracks how long you sleep, and your sleep quality. It’s also been benchmarked against the gold standard of sleep tracking – so I felt confident in the accuracy of it.

As I dug deeper, I realised that it was far more powerful than just a sleep tracking tool. It’s actually a much broader health device.

What seems to give it the edge on its competitors, is the way it uses and visualises the data. This helps you actually understand how to change your behaviours to improve things.

The product is build around three pillars:

Sleep

Whoop auto detects when you fall asleep and wake up (I was blown away with how well it does this). Shortly after you wake, it gives you a detailed summary of your sleep. Here’s mine from last night:

I mostly look at two things. How much sleep I got, and how much REM and deep sleep I managed. I like to see my total sleep over 7 hours, and my REM and deep sleep to be above 40%. Last night’s sleep was really good – 7.31 and 42%.

Recovery

Every day, you’re given a recovery score out of 100, and it’s banded green, orange and red:

Your recovery score is generated using three things:

  • Heart Rate variability (HRV)
  • Resting heart rate (RHR)
  • Sleep quality

Strain

My recovery score today is super good (91%). A combination of fairly good sleep, a good HRV and a low RHR:

Strain measures the cardiovascular load your body takes on over the course of a day. Throughout the day, you get a real time strain score of between 0 and 21.

Your score is generated by your heart rate throughout the day. So, things like activity, but also other factors such as stress will affect your strain score.

Specific activities also get a strain score. Whoop auto detects when you’re active, and will also try and classify the type of activity. It’s surprisingly accurate at this. For example, it will auto detect when I go for a cycle (within a few minutes of starting and finishing) and auto detects it as a cycling activity.

Here’s how strain is visualised:

OK, so that all sounds well and good, but here is why I find Whoop particularly powerful.

I am much more self aware of how my body is doing on a day to day basis now. The equation of strain vs. recovery is always in the back of my mind. And this often changes how I approach my day.

For example, if I wake up to a low recovery score, I will tend to map out a gentler day. I also make a concerted effort to get to bed earlier. If I’m at crossfit, I will approach my workout entirely differently. I will keep at a moderate pace, and focus more on technique. It’s not the right time to go all out. On the flip side, if I see a green recovery score, I know I can let loose a bit.

The other thing I’ve noticed, is I’m more in tune with how my behaviours affect my HRV and sleep. I’m starting to see some patterns and this allows me to tweak my behaviours to improve things. Drinking alcohol too close to bed is a big one.

Lastly, they just get the basics right. The strap looks good and is comfortable. It’s water proof. The battery lasts 5 days, and it’s easy to charge without taking it off (no data loss). You can create and join community groups, so you can compare yourself against others. Oh, and they have a really great podcast.

Whoop does WAY more than I’ve outlined here. It’s worth checking out the product features for yourself.

As with most things that are good and work well, it’s on the pricier side of things. The strap is free, but you have to sign up for a $30 a month subscription. You can get it a touch cheaper if you sign up for a longer commitment.

If you click this link, you’ll get your first month free (and I’ll get a free month too!)

[wpcode id=”7450″]

06 May 2020
Personal Improvement Permalink

It’s OK to throw a plan away

May 6, 2020

Don’t worry, it really is me writing this. No one has hacked my account! 😉

I got quite a few replies to yesterdays My love / hate relationship with weekly planning post. I realised after I hit the send button, that I should have included a few caveats.

Most of the replies were themed around those caveats. Here is part of one of the replies, which pretty much sums up most of them:

but maybe there is room to sway off the path every now and then, see what happens

I absolutely agree with that. I think having a plan, and then being flexible is the most effective way to go about things. But, that’s not an excuse to not do the plan in the first place. That’s the baseline.

Before I cover how I deal with being flexible, a couple of things.

If you don’t have clarity on what’s important to you in your life, you’re hosed from the start. You will find yourself being pulled towards things that aren’t important – or important to other people. If you don’t have a detailed plan for the week and the day, the same type of thing will happen (even if you have clarity). The awareness for what’s important will help limit the damage, but it will continue to be an uphill struggle.

With that said, a plan is something to hold onto. And there are two types of flexibility I afford myself:

It’s OK to deviate from the plan

Life happens. People cancel meetings. Important, urgent issues come up. You make a plan to wake up early and get a bunch of stuff done. But, instead your daughter decides to keep you up half the night (literally me today).

When stuff like this happens, you have to go back to the plan you made and adjust it. And then you get going again. And then adjust again if you need to. This happens to me most days, and it doesn’t take much time to do it. What’s important is that it’s all intentional.

It’s OK to drop the plan entirely.

I do this super rarely. But, sometimes there’s an opportunity to get lost in something completely different.

This happens to me at work from time to time. I’ll map out a whole day and feel good about it. Do this thing, speak to that person, go to that meeting etc. And then I’ll smell a problem somewhere.

Whilst it’s rare, sometimes I will decide to wipe the day out, and start exploring it. When I do that, I usually find that it was absolutely necessary to invest a large amount of time in that one thing.

When I come to the end of the day, I recalibrate the weekly plan and get back on track. Again, the key here is that this is an intentional decision.

So, I guess what I’m saying is you should start with detailed plans. You have to be intentional about what you are going to do. But, then you have to be flexible and adjust – either in small ways (frequently) or big ways (less frequently).

The key is to do this intentionally, and recalibrate after. This gives you the best of both worlds.

[wpcode id=”7450″]

05 May 2020
Personal Improvement Permalink

My love / hate relationship with weekly planning

May 5, 2020

I spend roughly two hours each week planning my personal life – usually on a Sunday evening.

I start with reminding myself what’s important. Luckily, I don’t have to try and figure this out (that would take longer than two hours!). I’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about this, and have something I can refer to and review.

It hasn’t changed much in the last few years. This is because I’ve done the hard work to figure out what’s truly important to me. So, it becomes more of a matter of connecting with it, and having some high level ideas for how I feel about them.

Next up, I make detailed notes about where I want to spend my time, and what I’ll actually do. That might not seem hard. But, it involves making decisions on priorities, and deciding specific actions. That can take a bit of time to get feeling right.

Then, I’ll break down the week, and start to map out at a high level what will happen every day. Some days will be more work focused, and won’t feel very balanced. Other days will be a better balance, or perhaps entirely focused on something else.

This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s actually quite tricky to get right. You have to look at the priorities and actions you decided in the previous step, and map them into the days. You need to look at existing commitments and where there may be conflicts. Quite often you realise that you’re not able to do everything you decided in the previous step. You’re forced to make further decisions on your priorities.

And lastly, it’s a matter of taking a step back and looking at all of this work. Does this feel like a good week? If the week played out close to that, would I be happy with the shift forward?

You might be thinking, this all feels a bit over the top. Two hours? That’s time that I could spend actually DOING something. I disagree.

If I were to look at the return on investment of my weekly planning, it might be the best two hours I spend each week. It’s absolutely the difference between a focused and balanced week, and, well – the opposite!

Unless you go through this for yourself, it’s hard to really understand how powerful it is.

I also do something very similar with my work week. It involves some extra parts, but the overall high level flow is similiar. And the return on investment is just as high.

I’ll leave you with a quote that sums up quite nicely why I invest so much time in planning my week:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln

[wpcode id=”7450″]

07 Jan 2020
Mindset Permalink

I made working on my mindset my number one priority – here’s what happened.

January 7, 2020

About 18 months ago, I faced a cold, hard truth about myself – my mindset was holding me back.

I had this moment where it really clicked for me – this can’t go on. If I didn’t address it, I would be left with some serious regrets in life.

Since then, I’ve made working on my mindset one of my highest priorities. I’ve tried a lot of things, including all of the usual advice. I’ve taken courses, read books, done exercises and talked to a therapist. Sure, they helped lift me in the moment, but if I’m brutally honest – they didn’t make a lasting difference.

And that sort of led me to a depressing conclusion. Perhaps I’m hardwired to having this type of mindset? Luckily, I can’t accept that. Even so, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think that from time to time.

I’m in absolute awe of people like Jesse Itzler and Gary Vaynerchuk. They are full of optimism and confidence. But, I suspect this comes naturally to them. I struggle to see how I can reach anywhere near their level of confidence and mental toughness. I’ve come to realise that I will probably always have periods where I feel high, and periods where I feel low.

What I found instead, is a few strategies that really, really helped me improve and manage my mindset. They have helped me have more self awareness, and better manage the highs and lows. I may never have the confidence and mental toughness of Gary Vee. But, that doesn’t mean I need to accept that my mindset will hold me back from reaching my potential.

Before I share these strategies, I want to give a bit of background so you can understand where I am coming from.

I suffer with self doubt and anxiety, and I go through periods where I feel low, and it’s a real struggle to be optimistic.

I like to think I’m an organised and effective person. I’m very clear about what’s important to me, and I know how to get stuff done. But, my fragile mindset means I’m working with a very shaky foundation. It can blow apart my organised and productive world in an instant.

At times, I can feel on top of the world. When I feel like this, I am SO sure of my capability. I want to 10X my life, and I know it’s totally possible.

And then in a flash, it can come tumbling down.

One trigger can be seeing someone working hard in a low paying job. How on earth is that fair? Who am I to be in such a privileged position to be able to do big and interesting things, and get paid well for it? I get caught in a rut of imposter self talk, and I question the point in everything.

Another trigger can be something not going well enough at work (usually based on the ridiculously high expectations I have of myself). I start to question the point of me even being there? Surely there is someone else out there that could have done better, and should be doing my job instead?

Now, to be clear – I do always pull myself out of these moments. Sometimes I get back on track very quickly, but other times it takes days or weeks. But, I always do pull myself back on track. But goddammit, my life would be so much easier if I wasn’t pulled back by my mindset. I would do so many more great things.

So, as I said, I made working on my mindset a priority. It’s now one of a handful of key areas of my life I focus on – often the highest priority. I’ve established a few key questions that I ask myself at least weekly:

  • Am I developing an optimistic and positive mindset – where I see life as full of opportunity?
  • Am I pushing myself to feel confident and good enough? Where I feel capable of doing whatever I put my mind to?
  • Am I questioning beliefs that hold me back, and trying to overcome them?

These questions have helped me stay focused on improving my mindset.
So, let’s dive into the strategies. Here are three strategies that help me to feel good, and stay in the ‘high’ periods for as long as possible:

Look after myself

OK, OK, I know you’ve probably heard this before – as had I. But, for a long while it didn’t click for me just how important this. It only hit home when I started to notice the correlation between when I looked after myself, and when I didn’t.

It comes down to three things:

  • Drink very little or no alcohol.
  • Get enough sleep.
  • Exercise.

When I do all three, I tend to feel great about myself. And when I let at least two of them slip, I notice an immediate increase in anxiety and self doubt. This is a clear starting signal for a low period.

And of course, they are all connected. Drink too much alcohol, and you get rubbish sleep. Get rubbish sleep, and you’re less likely to want to exercise.

I say it in that order, because for me, reducing my alcohol consumption has been the game changer. I’ve cut back from two bottles of wine over the weekend. Now, I drink no more than two glasses over the weekend – and no more than one per night.

I’m hyper aware of these three things now. To the point where if I have a couple of nights of bad sleep, it’s on my radar to not let this extend to three or four nights. Because if it does, I know I’m at higher risk of a low period setting in.

Be in a positive feedback loop

This has been crucial for me. When I’m feeling good about myself, I’m almost always in a positive feedback loop. It’s really important for me to have regular feedback and evidence that I am good enough and capable.

And that doesn’t mean people actually giving me the feedback (although of course that’s always nice to hear). I get my positive feedback loop from seeing my impact. It reminds me that I am able to solve hard problems, and be useful – often in a way that many other people can’t.

When I’m going through a low period, there isn’t alot of tangible evidence of impact. That means my self doubt is much more likely to set in.

So, how do I influence that?

Well, firstly, I’m super picky about where I work nowadays. I need to be in an environment where I can be successful. That means working on things I am good at. Where there are enough hard problems to solve. And, having the autonomy to make a difference.

And then it’s a matter of being focused, and working on the right things.

A combination of the above usually means I can consistently make an impact, and be in a positive feedback loop.

Surround myself with positive people

This makes a world of difference. I need people around me that have energy and ambition. People who are positive and optimistic. People who are confident and take risks.

These people inspire me, and their personalities rub off on me. I’ve found I’m far less likely to dip when I’m regularly around people like this. I have more confidence.

I have a bunch of people like this both at work, and outside of work nowadays. And I follow a few people online who are great role models for being mentally tough. I listen to the Gary Vaynerchuk podcast almost daily. I follow Jesse Itzler and David Goggins through their Instagram accounts. And I listen to Ben Bergeron’s YouTube channel.

It’s pretty obvious really. If you want to change yourself, it makes sense to surround yourself with people who are more like you want to be.

The above three things have made a massive difference to how I feel about myself. I think about them on a weekly basis.

That said, I have to be realistic. I will still find myself in a period of feeling low from time to time. Here are three strategies I’ve found super useful to manage these low periods:

1. Accept it for what it is

It is what it is. I can do everything I can to avoid a low period, but sometimes I will find myself in one.

You have to be OK with it, and accept it. Every low period I’ve ever had, has always passed. This one will be no different. When you have enough self awareness for where you are, you can start to calmly work your way out of it

2. Reduce the expectations you have for yourself

It just stands to reason. If you’re not on your A game, don’t continue to hold yourself to the same expectations.

I used to try and power through regardless, and I only became more frustrated. Now, I temporarily reduce the expectations I have for myself. I do this across the board – with my work, my family, my health, etc. I scale things back to the minimum. I’m OK with going through the motions for a week or two. Trust me, nothing will fall apart. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever notice that your foot is temporarily off the gas. It all averages out in the end.

The key is to give yourself some space and the right environment to get back on track.

3. Fix what’s off

The strategies that help me to feel good – work so well. So much so, that I usually I find that when I go back to them, one or more of them is obviously off.

I may have neglected to look after myself. Perhaps I lost focus on work, and got distracted working on the wrong things – and I got out of the positive feedback loop. Or, I haven’t had the right people around me enough.

By fixing what’s off, I usually find I get back on track pretty quickly.

And that’s where I’m at right now with everything mindset. I feel for the first time, I’m actually able to keep the low periods to a minimum, and manage myself when I get into one.

From here, I’m going to continue to explore how I can get closer to the likes of the people I surround myself by. That’s the next level.

[wpcode id=”7450″]

05 Nov 2019
Personal Improvement Permalink

Two proven ways to get important work done

November 5, 2019

It might be the most important thing you ever have to figure out for yourself. How do you get important work done?

It’s the key to living a full, productive, happy and balanced life. When you don’t have this figured out, you end up doing a lot of things, but actually achieving very little.

It looks like this:

The holy grail is spending most of your time in quadrants 1 and 2 (important work). And you want to be spending as little time in quadrants 3 and 4 (not important work).

Sounds obvious right? Well, it’s actually super fucking hard. It’s almost as if life is full of temptations that drag you into quadrants 3 and 4. Even worse, it has a way of tricking you into thinking you’re working on quadrants 1 and 2, when in fact you’re procrastinating in quadrants 3 and 4.

Ever convinced yourself that re-organising your google docs was important and necessary work? Well, you know where I’m coming from. 😉

Now, I want to be clear. I’m not claiming to be some type of rockstar that spends all my time in quadrants 1 and 2. I struggle like everyone else. I constantly wrestle with the temptations to put off important work. And I don’t always win.

That said, I have found two strategies that help me get important work done:

Plan your weeks and days

Jeeeeez. When are you going to stop writing about weekly and daily planning? Never ;-). That’s because I think it’s the most important thing we can do to get important work done.

If you’re going to have a chance of spending time in quadrants 1 and 2, you have to be intentional about where you spend your time. You have to carve out time to think about what work is actually important, and when you will do it. This puts you in control over your life.

I’m not going to cover how to plan your weeks and days, because I’ve done that before. Here are a couple of useful reads:

Create some space

This is how you can edge into quadrant 2 (important, not urgent work).

You don’t want a back to back schedule, where you’re rushing from one thing to the next. When I see my calendar starting to look like that, I get super worried and fix it.

You need to carve out space where you’re not doing anything. Ideally you never want to be more than 50% committed. That gives you a bit of space for important and urgent things that inevitably pop up. Importantly, it gives you space to think properly about things.

It’s in these spaces, that my brain starts to wonder about things a bit further down the line. This is literally the definition of quadrant 2 (important, but not urgent). And in this space, you can either take action on these items, or at least queue up action for the near future.

You’ll notice that the above two strategies are connected. Getting my calendar straight is a key component to planning my weeks and days. It’s the perfect time to ensure you carve out space to think about things properly.

Lastly, I want to give credit to these brilliant blog posts on ‘Wait But Why’. They really helped me with how I think about procrastination:

Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (Part 1)
How To Beat Procrastination (Part 2)
The Procrastination Matrix

[wpcode id=”7450″]

08 Oct 2019
Personal Improvement Permalink

How to get back on track

October 8, 2019

When I woke up this morning, I found myself worrying about where I was in life.

It’s been a chaotic few months. We had a family holiday in Yorkshire. We’ve been doing a major house renovation, where we had to move out for 6 weeks. We moved back in now, but we’re still living in a partial building site. My daughter Fearne started school. And, I’m holding down a fairly ‘full on’ job in London.

Read more