Your habits define your energy levels. If you have good habits, you’ll feel energized and be more resilient to burn out, both physically and mentally. If your habits are misaligned, you can get into a cycle where you feel worse and worse, until your it’s a struggle to keep up
Habit #1: Go to Sleep Early
Sleep is the foundation of your energy. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll start to underperform.
- Seven to eight hours of sleep is a requirement if you want to stay cognitively sharp in the long run.
The best books aren’t those that teach you facts
They subtly change your thinking patterns
- Always have an audio book that motivates you to work on your goals
- A good book for this is one that automatically adjusts your thinking onto the things you need to work hard on
Exercise is a long-term investment in your energy levels
If you struggle to find time for exercise, don’t make going to the gym your prerequisite.
- Do at least 10 burpees every day from your home. These will get your heart pumping and blood moving and don’t require setting aside two hours from your already busy schedule.
You need to become the salesperson for your own goals
Part of that starts with packaging
- How you frame your goals and projects can have a huge effect on your motivation
- Set aside ten minutes every day to think about what today’s actions are helping you build towards
Napping may feel lazy, but it has a range of cognitive benefits
A short nap can turn you back on for work in the afternoon, especially if you’re doing a lot of learning.
- The key is to learn how to take short naps – do not take naps which are too long.
You have control over the friends in your life
Set a time limit on friends who leave you feeling drained
- Consider who you spend your time with when there are people who consistently create one-sided emotional exchanges as the basis for your relationships
- Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on sometimes, but some people will expect you to be their permanent shoulder
The last habit is an ongoing effort to bring the different elements of your life out of conflict and into alignment
Spend some time untangling the different conflicts in your life to see how you could resolve them.
- Sometimes that can be done in the short-term, by making a change. Sometimes, it requires a long-term plan to escape the toxic environment, social circle or belief system that holds you back.
Aim to get your most important work done in the first four hours of the workday
The benefits to your energy here are mostly psychological
- If you’ve gotten some work done, your mood will be good and you will feel productive
- Deep work is not sustainable for the full workday
Energy is often about momentum
One way to avoid this is to set a very clear intention of how your day will go
- Before you go to bed, write down your plan for the next day and visualize it
- Visualizing this intention and writing it down into your schedule can make it happen more automatically when you wake up
