Day 26: How To Be The Energizer Bunny
On the first few days of this 30 Days, I was amped up every morning to get my thoughts and words onto the page and share my story with the world. After a few weeks, I shifted to writing in the afternoon because it was taking me longer and longer in the mornings and I wanted to change it up to see if it would help. Now I’m in the last week, telling this story as I watch Alabama vs. Florida State, hoping that the Seminoles can redeem the remainder of the football portion of this day after another all-too-typical State loss. And let me tell you, I’m learning that writing at the end of the day is a bad idea.
This calls to mind more words from Scott Adams. If you remember, I’ve touched on Scotts Adams’ book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, in yesterday’s post, as well as the post on goals vs. systems.
In discussing the challenge of accomplishing all the things that we need to get done in a day, Adams says:
The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main metric: my energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.
The logical next question is how does Adams define energy:
‘Energy’ is a simple word that captures a mind-boggling array of complicated happenings. For our purposes I’ll define your personal energy as anything that gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically. Like art, you know it when you see it.
So how do you go about maximizing your personal energy? None of this is rocket science, but it’s really pretty simple:
One of the most important tricks for maximizing your productivity involves matching your mental state to the task.
What does this mean? For many people, their creative energies are highest in the morning or late at night, so you might be better off doing things that require your creativity in the morning. Conversely, you might notice your energy lagging in the afternoon (2pm-3pm is the time I know where I hit a wall), so that can be a time where save your routine, mindless tasks like making copies or paying bills…not trying to write the next daily installment of your 3o Days story.
Adams notes that this can’t really work for everyone because many of us are limited by work obligations and don’t have the freedom to set our own schedules, but he suggests the next best thing for those people (and something you’ll recognize if you’ve been reading this story): getting up at 4:00am, while the world sleeps, to get stuff done. Or if that’s too early, you can try 5am like a reasonable person…
Another “trick” that Adams discusses for maximizing personal energy takes place in his discussion of optimizers vs. simplifiers:
A simplifier will prefer the easy way to accomplish a task, while knowing that some amount of extra effort might have produced a better outcome. An optimizer looks for the very best solution even if the extra complexity increases the odds of unexpected problems . . . Optimizing is often the strategy of people who have specific goals and feel the need to do everything in their power to achieve them. Simplifying is generally the strategy of people who view the world in terms of systems. The best systems are simple, and for good reason. Complicated systems have more opportunities for failure. Human nature is such that we’re good at following simple systems and not so good at following complicated systems . . .
Another big advantage of simplification is that it frees up time, and time is one of your most valuable resources in the world.
Clearly, Adams favors simplification over optimization as an energy maximizer.
Adams talks about a few other things to help with maximizing energy. Specifically, sitting position, tidiness/having a tidy work area, increasing your knowledge (lack of knowledge how to do something kills your energy and motivation to do something), and not being a jerk. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and I can’t nearly do the topic justice with the limited space that I have here to keep your attention. So check out the book. It’s no Book of Manly Men, but it has some really good ideas and creative ways to think about doing things that you’ve been doing for years.
From all this, I can gather that my experiments with changing up the time that I write the stories of my 30 Days have not been successful with maximizing my personal energy. I’ve tried mornings, afternoons, and evenings, and of the 3, I’ve had the most success in the mornings. So maybe I’ll go back to that for these last few days.
Yes, that’s right, we’re coming up to the last 4 days of this 30 Days. If you’v enjoyed reading, I’d really appreciate your feedback. I’ll be making decisions in the next few days on what things I’ll be continuing to do for more than 30 Days, and if this story has been helpful to people, then I may keep it going on a more limited, perhaps, weekly basis.
Until tomorrow..
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Quote of the Day
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
~Johnny Cash
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Links to Past Episodes/Resources:
Introduction Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10
Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15 Day 16 Day 17 Day 18 Day 19 Day 20
Day 21 Day 22 Day 23 Day 24 Day 25
Manfield’s Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self
If you have any feedback, please send me a message or leave it on my Facebook page: Thirty Days. This is a new project and I’d love to hear your thoughts. It is a tremendous encouragement to know that someone is reading this. Encouragement, comments AND criticism are welcome.
