Espresso Shots of Wisdom
“Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today”
In an ideal world, we would wake each day refreshed, reinvigorated and reenergised - ready to attack the day - but for too many of us the alarm clock is met with dread, a groggy head and the need for caffeine.
If the latter describes your morning, you are undoubtedly doing more each day than your body can recover from. In this case it’s time to ruthlessly subtract activities that don’t serve you and to begin deploying the ‘Minimum Effect Dose’ strategy in all areas of your life.
“It isn’t easy for a man to force himself into a discipline of idleness, but it is essential. Life is not work: to work without stopping sends a man mad. Remember that. And to want to do so is a bad sign: those of your colleagues who could not stop working were by no means the best.”
In times of high stress and high workload, we tend to demand more from ourselves. Longer hours, answering emails in the evenings and calling clients and colleagues well beyond our scheduled hours.
As we work for extended periods of time, the theory of diminishing returns kicks in. What would have taken 30 minutes at the beginning of the day, now takes 2 hours, with quality taking a severe hit.
For all you high performers reading, your rest protocol should be protected as fervently as your favourite task of the week.
Your body and mind will thank you by producing peak performance.
(Charles De Gaulle)
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day -- Mother Nature's best effort yet at contra-death.”
Sleep quite literally is the Elixir of Youth. Getting 8 hours of high quality sleep per night protects you from cancer and dementia, substantially reduces the probability of injury amongst athletes and lowers the risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and even depression.
For these reasons, I am working on improving my sleep routine, the quality of my sleep and evaluating the impact of this on personal and athletic performance. I will share the proposed protocols and the findings of these protocols in a future article.
Cappuccino Contemplations
Is there a direct correlation between the internal resistance to starting a project and the importance and impact that project will have?
Do we innately know that a career change or new project is going to help us create a meaningful, fulfilled and purposeful life that will have a vast positive impact on the world, yet resist it for this very reason.
Does the gravity of our potential impact stand in our way, and how do we overcome this resistance?
The Weekly Grind had been on my mind for the last 5 years, but I always resisted it until a close mentor, both metaphorically and literally [by pushing the publish button on the first edition], pushed me over the first hurdle.
In this 60 second clip, Steven Pressfield gives his thoughts on this phenomenon.
The cost of accepting the familiar over the optimal.
Navigating life is extremely difficult. Turbulence, as a result, is inevitable and within the maelstrom that is modern life we can find ourselves accepting jobs, committing to relationships, continuing with habits, staying in environments, and persisting with practices that we know do not serve us.
Worse yet, many of us, due to the familiarity of the situation, accept these conditions even know we are certain that the net impact of the situation will be negative.
What we forget to consider is the risk of staying.
The risk of staying at a job we hate or in a toxic relationship is immeasurable.
The loathing, detestation and bitterness that we currently feel will grow exponentially and within 5 years you’ll be just like you are now, except that a lot more of what is good about you will be gone and a lot more of what is terrible about you will be amplified.
You’ll age 10 years within 5 years and the toll on your soul and spirit will be irreparable.
Robert Greene has his say on this ‘staying for the pay check mentality’ in this 45 second clip.
Americano And Chill
With the weekend upon us, and the arrival of Owen O’Kane’s latest book, How to Be Your Own Therapist: Boost your mood and reduce your anxiety in 10 minutes a day, I am looking forward to an Americano and Chill and digging into this book.
I will post a review in the coming weeks.
Have a great weekend!
David.