Planned rest, proper nutrition and daily meditation are the power tools of super achievement (Part 2)
In the article yesterday we explored the necessity of regular rest, proper nutrition and for making time in your day to clear your mind and meditate. The greatest challenge you will face, as you try to introduce these three crucial components into your life, is that you will feel like you are slacking off, when in fact you introducing three new tools that will in fact make you more productive. The first step in this very necessary process is to see the huge productivity benefits that will flow to you as you build time into your schedule to recharge, how building good nutritional choices into your daily planning and scheduling time to unhook and allow your brain to replenish are all crucial components of creating the success you desire. If you are like me and the idea of taking time off feels like you are actually just slacking off, then shift your self-talk away from “taking time off” and see the time you schedule into your day for recovery, meditation and ingesting proper nutrition as “Rejuvenation, productivity building time”. This shift has really helped me to introduce these crucial components into my schedule. I now spend less time working each day, schedule rest time, exercise time, nutrition time and I ensure that I make time to meditate every day. Amazingly, since I have introduced these components into my busy schedule, I am getting far more effective work done each day. Make this shift away from “I am wasting time” by introducing these apparent time wasters into my schedule to I have a new set of amazing productivity building tools that are making me far more effective and productive and you will astound yourself at how much more you will get done.
The only way to make this work for you is to ensure that you actually schedule all three components into your dairy. As you know “whatever gets scheduled, gets done”. Every Sunday evening, when you are putting your weekly plan together for the week, you need to build the following components into your schedule, time to meet your future and to rest each day. Schedule regular meals throughout the day, make time to exercise and also build in time to meditate. These time slots are penned into your dairy and become unmovable appointments. The trick to make this work for you is to ensure that you defend these appointments on your calendar, like you would an opportunity to appear on the Oprah show. During your appearance on Oprah, you would not take calls, accept interruptions. You must treat these crucial daily meetings the same way, you need to remove yourself completely from the grid and block all other interruptions.
These components are crucial productivity, energy and efficiency building tools. So break your desire to keep these activities secret from everyone around you. You have no reason to feel guilty about taking care of yourself and for doing things every day that are going to make you more effective. Use yourself as an example to everyone around you and show them how introducing these crucial components into your schedule actually make you far more productive. As you set new parameters and expectations around your schedule and you communicate this to everyone around you. It is amazing how the world seems to reorganize itself and everything seems to align with your new schedule.
The final and very crucial component in this process is to measure how you do each day. As you review how you do each day, week and month and see how you are improving and getting more and more done. You will see a pattern emerge that will give you a way to not only monitor your progress, but a way of constantly improving and making this system work better and better for you.
Measure all the rejuvenation components,
· Are you keeping your commitments to rest and relax every day?
· Are you exercising a minimum of 3 – 4 times a week?
· Are you eating proper, nutritional meals 5 times a day?
· Are you making time to mediate every day?
Commit to make, introducing these crucial components into your schedule, an uncompromised and productive priority each day and you will see you effectiveness and efficiency improve day after day.
This is what I recommend you introduce into your schedule as rejuvenation time
· 40 minutes for meditation
· 40 minutes to exercise, walk, gym – to move my body away from the office.
· 40 Minutes to do activities that engage and relax your mind. Find something that can challenge and excite you to do.
· Take one day off a week, 24 hours in which you do not touch anything work related at all. I normally choose a Saturday and from 12 on Saturday until 12 on Sunday I do not think about work or do any work at all.
· Schedule a 3 day long weekend getaway every 90 days.
· Take a three week break once a year and travel.
As you introduce a schedule into your life, where you encourage recovery and rejuvenation, you will see remarkable improvements in your creative capacity, level of focus, efficiency, productivity and efficiency. We are creatures of habit, so the only way to make this work for you is to schedule it into your day and to make this part of your new routines and success habit set.
No comments:
Post a Comment