Energy is a finite resource. The thing is, we don’t all start with the same amount, we don’t spend it at the same rate, and we recharge differently. We know that the harder we lean in (the more energy we spend), the more we need to recover. What we don’t necessarily know is how much we need to recovery. What we don’t usually know is how much energy someone else spent, and how much they need to recover.
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To manage this conundrum, people with disabilities, chronic illness or chronic pain have created a metaphor using spoons to depict energy. Each day, you have a certain number of spoons. Each task (discrete tasks like work, cooking, etc. and emotional load of tasks like stress and frustration) cost a certain number of spoons. Days you are stressed, didn’t sleep well, are overloaded, sick or depressed, you start with fewer spoons than normal. You can push through and do more today by stealing spoons from tomorrow, but then you are starting tomorrow with fewer spoons. ​

When something is a priority, it’s important.  It’s protected.  It should be done or thought about before other things.  Also, when everything is a priority, nothing is. 

The thing is, depending on how you classify your priorities, higher priorities might be based on someone else’s expectations, consequences, importance to your daily life, importance to your larger goals and purpose, or deadlines.  In the absence of clear criteria, we tend to use urgency and priority synonymously.  The more urgent something is, the higher priority it is, but when urgency controls your priorities, you spend most of your time putting out fires.

Urgency is pretty clear.  When something is urgent, it is time sensitive or has a pressing deadline.  If not, it’s not urgent. Importance is less clear, that is, what makes something important or not important isn’t as obvious as a pressing deadline. 

Let’s explore some ways to look at what’s important.  If something is important, it adds value to your life.  It contributes to your passion or purpose, or it betters your life or the life of those you care about.  If something is important, there are consequences if you don’t take action. 

The thing is, when something is really important, we tend to know about it and can plan things around it.  This means we can use our time well and give important things the time they truly deserve.  This will keep us from spending our time putting out fires that don’t truly require our time and attention. 

Colonel Blum wrote a widely respected and distributed article about the difference between important and urgent, and looking back at his career, what he would have done differently.  Something is important if you can say yes to the following three criteria: 

1. It is important to someone who’s important to you.  
2. Your personal presence makes a difference.  
3. The opportunity is not going to come around again. 

 

One way to balance urgent versus important tasks is to use the Eisenhower Matrix (check out free worksheet here).  Using urgent and important, we can create four quadrants: Urgent and Important, Urgent and Not Important, Not Urgent and Important, and Not Urgent and Not Important.  Once things are divided into the quadrants, then the quadrants tell you how to approach these tasks.  

1. Urgent and Important: Do this now  
2. Not Urgent and Important: Decide when you will do this (schedule it and give it the time it needs)  
3. Urgent and Not Important: Delegate this to someone else  
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: Dump this.  It doesn’t need done. 

Another way to think about prioritizing is to think of Priorities and priorities and how they nest together.  P-Priorities are the big picture things you want in your life and for those in your life.  How you want to feel, what sort of life you want to live, the things in your life you don’t want to compromise.  p-priorities are the ankle-biter things that come up on a regular basis that need attention but may or may not move you toward the P-Priorities.  The p-priorities can be established for the day or for the week.  Knowing your P-priorities helps you respond to what’s really important when things pop up and vie for your attention. 

When examining opportunities, determine if these opportunities or tasks support your P-Priorities.  When looking at the things filling your plate, determine how well the p-priorities feed or serve the P-Priorities.  Look at your day’s priorities, do they help serve this week’s priorities?  Do this week’s priorities support this month’s priorities?  This year’s priorities?  If your day’s or week’s priorities don’t nest into or feed your month’s or year’s priorities, then it’s probably just busywork and not helping you life the life you want. 

 
#priority #timemanagement #goals #values

To manage your time well, you need to get really good at protecting your time from things that aren’t as important.  A way to protect your time is to create time blocks.  These are designated slots of time in your schedule that are allocate for specific tasks.

This works because we tend to protect things that are scheduled into our calendars by not scheduling other things to occur in the same time window, and limiting multitasking.  These time blocks tend to be protected for things like appointments, meetings, transportation, and family time.  The time that isn’t already dedicated to something can look like free time when you glance at your calendar, but we know better.  There are things we need to work on, tasks we need to accomplish.  We need to protect time for those too.  Say you are the lead on a project.  Others might see you as “available” and come ask questions.  It’s important they do this, but it also prevents you from getting your tasks done.  If you block time in your calendar to get your stuff done, others know you aren’t available right now and can come at another time.  This also helps protect you if someone else can schedule your time.  If they see white space, they assume you are available; if they see time blocked out to work on something, they know you aren’t available. 

What are the things you need to get done but never seem to make the time to complete?  What are the things you aren’t able to get done because others assume you are available to help them?  These can be work related things, but they don’t have to be.  Time blocking is just blocking out time in your calendar for what needs done.  If it’s the first 30 minutes of the day for checking email, if it’s time at lunch to eat away from your desk, if it’s exercising in the evening, if it’s protecting family dinner time, if it’s a time of day you no longer check your phone or email, it can be blocked out in your day so you (and others) plan around it. 

Time blocking simply protects your time for a particular thing, but it doesn’t tell you how you spend that window of time. To be efficient and effective in our time blocks, it can be helpful to use a strategy called power hours. Power Hours structure how we spend our time and help us get the most out of our limited focus, build in recovery, and accounts for “warming up” to the task and common distractions.

We have a limited ability to focus intensely on one task. With training, we can get up to about 90 minutes, but most of us are at about 15-30 minutes of focus or concentration. Once our focus is broken, it takes 5-15 minutes to get back to the level of focus we had before.

Power hours help ease us into the work we need to get done instead of expecting us to go from flow and focus on one thing to flow and focus on something different. A power hour consists of 3 phases.


Phase 1: Warm Up (5-15 minutes)
In this phase, we are “warming ourselves up” to the task and the focus it will take. We establish our goals or what needs to get done, we gather necessary materials and we reduce distractions. Ways we can reduce distraction include filling our water or coffee, silencing our devices, going to the restroom, clearing the desk, etc.
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Phase 2: Intense Focus or Work (30-40 minutes)
In this phase, we are getting work done according to the plan we created. If we have a small distraction, we bring ourselves back to the task at hand. If we have a large distraction, it may be better to see to the distraction and restart the power hour once you’ve dealt with the distraction. This time window is flexible based on your ability to maintain intense focus. If you can focus without interruption or distraction for 15 minutes, then phase 2 will last about 15 minutes. If you have trained your ability to focus without interruption for 90 minutes, then phase 2 will last about 90 minutes.

Phase 3: Reflect and Recovery (15 minutes)
In this phase, take a few minutes to reflect or review what you accomplished. (What did you get done? Did you plan your work well? Did you manage your distractions well?) Then you do something to recover. Take a walk, get a snack, refill your drink, watch a funny video. Get up from your chair and do something to let your brain shift gears.

If you have 3 hours blocked for a particular task or project, you can break it into 2-3 power hours based on your ability to maintain intense focus on that task. If you’re on a roll and want to stay in phase 2, it’s up to you. If you stay in phase 2, you can maintain momentum, but will likely be depleted when you finish. If you move to phase 3, you can recover some energy and brainpower and pause to look at the big picture, then do an abbreviated phase 1 before getting back into a groove in phase 2. You will lose some momentum, but you’ll check in on the big picture and manage your energy and brainpower better throughout the day.

A Power Hour is adapted from a study skills strategy taught to cadets at United States Military Academy.


#calendar #timemanagement #priority #powerhour

Entrepreneurial You by Dorie Clark is a helpful book for individuals looking to start or grow their business. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you need to have multiple streams of income. Period. She then walks you through many successful strategies to diversify your income streams. ​

References

Clark, D. (2017). Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive. Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

Rohde, M. (n.d.). What are sketchnotes? Retrieved from https://sketchnotearmy.com/sketchnotes.

#sketchnote #Entrepreneur #business

Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz is a really interesting book to read. It's easy to assume that having choices is a good thing. However, having too many choices can create a larger conundrum than having limited choices. is a powerful and motivating book. He describes the challenges with making decisions with too many choices, and provides some guidance on how to navigate those tricky situations. ​

What does it mean to hustle? To work hard, put forth effort, to move with a purpose? To push, strive, rush, grind, or hurry? To stay busy? Growing up, hustling was a good thing. Hustling meant put in extra effort. It meant the difference between achieving your goals and not. ​

What is stress? Stress is a demand placed on your body. Stress is also the non-specific response to those demands.


Stress is a good thing. Stress mobilizes energy so you can rally and overcome the challenge you are facing. Stress protects you from danger. If you’re getting chased by a cougar, the stress response helps you fight or escape from that cougar.


But stress management is a $13.9 billion industry. Stress is bad when it becomes chronic. We aren’t generally getting chased by cougars, but we are bombarded with stressors and irritants on a daily basis. It’s hard to escape stress. Not only that, we can turn our stress response just by thinking about something stressful. This makes it near impossible to stay away from stress triggers. We never really turn off our stress response anymore.


If we were a deer, and we were chased by a cougar, the stress response would kick in to help us escape the cougar. Once the cougar was gone, the stress trigger was gone, and our body can go through the natural reset process to bring us back to a non-stressed state. As humans, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to go through the natural reset process to bring us back to a balanced energy state because we are bombarded with stressors, we relive stressors, and we anticipate stressors.


Saying “the stress response” is still pretty vague. Let’s dig into what’s happening in our body with stress. Most of us are familiar with the fight or flight response, but it’s a little more nuanced with that. Polyvagal theory identifies three different branches of the stress response. ​

The newest development in our stress response evolved in primates. This branch emphasized the important of social cues and social interaction. When there’s a potential threat, we look around to see what others are doing, and this determines how we respond. If others don’t perceive a threat, we stay grounded, open and calm. Picture a small child that just fell. The child instinctually looks around to see how others reacted before they react. If we rush over with concern in our faces, it signals that what happened was bad and unsafe, and the child starts crying. If we don’t react, or we react with positive emotions, the child will generally stay calm.


The next branch of the stress response evolved with mammals. This branch is the traditional fight or flight response. When there’s a potential threat and we perceive ourselves as being able to handle this threat, our body mobilizes energy so we can fight or flee. Adrenaline kicks in, our respiration and heart rate increase, all so we can get more energy to our arms and legs. This response also turns off digestion, reproduction and our immune system, as these functions aren’t needed if we are currently being chased by a cougar. If we enter fight mode, we might feel anger, frustration, or irritation, and get fidgety with our hands. If we enter flee mode, we might feel anxiety, worry, panic or fear, and get fidgety with our legs.


The oldest branch of the stress response evolved with lizards. This branch is the freeze response. When there’s a potential threat that we perceive to be beyond our ability to fight or flee from, we enter the freeze mode. When we are in freeze mode our body shuts down and withdraws from external stimuli. It conserves energy, decreases blood pressure, and physically and/or emotionally isolates you. In this mode, we may feel numb, dissociated, withdrawn, trapped, shut down, depressed or hopeless.


In all my years learning about the stress response, I pictured freeze mode to be “deer in the headlights,” literally freezing up in an unhelpful way at an inopportune time. As a result, I never thought I spent much time in the freeze response. With this more nuanced understanding, I realized I spend a lot of time in freeze mode. When my stress level gets really high, I don’t want to talk to people, I numb, I avoid people and any non-essential activity, and I just want to wait it out until it gets better.


What’s really powerful about this deeper understanding of the stress response is the power our perception has over how the stress response impacts us.

• If we have a potential threat, and social cues that we trust indicate it’s not a threat, we stay in control and the more protective stress responses don’t kick in.
• If we have a potential threat, and we believe we have the ability to handle this threat, we go into fight or flight mode to handle this threat.
• If we have a potential threat, and we believe it is beyond our ability to handle it, we go into freeze mode to withdraw from the threat.

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What can we do with this information? Stay tuned for the next blog post where I’ll cover some strategies to impact the stress response.

If good enough means we put in our best effort, that’s great, only “best effort” is hard to measure.  My best effort on a task is probably different than your best effort.  But even within myself, my best effort on a task might change based on time, energy, competing priorities, etc.  Is my best effort my all-out best effort?  Is it the best effort of what I have to give that day?  Is it my best effort of what I have to give that day if I ignore everything else?  How can I use best effort as a benchmark for good enough if best effort isn’t constant?
​Another reason to redefine our standard for good enough is Parkinson's Law.  Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time allotted.  At my old job, if I only had an hour to prepare for a training, I could spend that whole hour preparing, organizing my notes and reviewing timing.  If I had a full day to prepare for a training, I could spend the whole day preparing, organizing my notes, rehearsing, reviewing the timing needed for activities, etc.  I had a core set of things I did to prepare, beyond that, I could spend a little or a lot of time preparing, but beyond those core things, the rest was just busywork.  If you have weeks to spend writing a paper, you could spend weeks writing that paper.  If you only have tonight to write that same paper, you could write it tonight.  It should be noted, that shrinking the time window for a task can result in rushed and sloppy work, but the point I want to make with Parkinson's Law is that while chasing “good enough,” I could spend a little time or a lot of time.  Based on how much time I have, my standard for good enough might need to change.  But If I allow it, chasing good enough can take way more time than is appropriate for the task. 
Finally, and this is what I try to focus on the most when defining what good enough means to me, is diminishing returns.  There’s a point in my productivity where suddenly it’s a lot harder to get the same results.  For example, in school, I knew about how much effort I needed to put into a class to get the grade I wanted.  I could put more effort in to get a higher grade, but it would have been an extraordinary amount more time and effort to get the extra few points.  Proportionally, it was a substantial amount more effort for only a slightly higher grade.  This turning point, where it suddenly takes way more effort to yield the same increase in outcome, is the point of diminishing returns.  This is the point where I try to place the good enough mark.  I could do better, but it’s not worth the extra hustle to get to that mark. 

I like working hard on things I care about.  The more I reflect, the less I like hustling.  To me, hustling is running around busily spending energy that doesn’t necessarily yield a better result.  It’s spending energy to prove my worth instead of knowing I am enough, regardless of how I do, what gets done, and what doesn’t get finished. 

If you find yourself hustling for the extra results, ask yourself two questions:

• “Is this where my energy needs to be?  Would it better serve me on something else?”
• If this is where your energy needs to be, keep going and be awesome
• If you don’t need to be spending the extra effort on this, accept good enough and move on
• “What’s driving my need to put in extra effort here?”
• If joy, fulfillment or knowing this is a time to rally is driving the extra effort, keep going and be awesome
• If the need to please, prove yourself, or show your worth by being perfect, shame or fear is driving the extra effort, accept good enough and move on

When evaluating the big things in your life, it’s important to remember there’s a time to rally, and there’s a time to move on to the next gig.  There are things in your life that are worth the extra effort to strive for your best.  But there are things in your life that aren’t worth your extra effort.  It’s important to determine what these are ahead of time before you get stuck hustling on the hedonic treadmill.