These 3 Key Habits Keep My Energy Levels High for Optimal Leadership Performance
A Personal Journey of Continual Improvement
The amount of energy I have at my disposal daily largely determines my leadership performance.
When I am low on energy, I will not get a lot of stuff done, and I will definitely not be able to do the hard stuff. Difficult decisions, difficult conversations, and difficult emotions all require a ton of energy to deal with.
Before I could manage my energy, I would lose a lot of effectiveness due to being low on energy. I did not fully understand the connection between my energy levels and my performance as a leader at that time and would feel guilty for being lazy and hated myself whenever I was procrastinating.
Through trial and error, I discovered that on days that I would feel energetic, I could do more of the hard stuff. Difficult conversations that felt impossible to execute on some days were nothing more than another task I would complete on a high-energy day.
For this reason, I started to look for ways to increase my daily energy levels. I ran many experiments and made many improvements; looking back, there are three key habits that are the foundation of my high and stable daily energy.
Habit #1: Minimize decision making
Back in the day, improving my productivity was all about working more hours and getting more done within those hours.
I would not pay any attention to how I felt or how a particular task would make me feel. I was oblivious to the fact that certain decisions would drain my energy before anything worthwhile was accomplished.
Decisions on what to wear and eat were two of the most significant daily decisions on which I would waste my energy.
These days I have minimized the decision-making process through the implementation of specific systems.
What to wear
It all starts with where I buy my clothes. I have decided on two specific brands that tailor to my needs. I am subscribed to their newsletter and have their yearly sales dates on my agenda.
I do not waste time thinking about where or when to buy clothes. I stick to these two brands and only purchase clothes during their yearly sales.
Because I will only wear my favorite clothes, I do not need clothes that take up space but will (almost) never be worn.
My drawers contain a set amount of pockets for every clothes category: x amount of underwear, x amount of shirts, etc.
Whenever a specific piece of clothing needs to be replaced, I will throw it away, leaving an open pocket that clearly communicates what I need. I will only buy clothes when something is in need of replacement.
Having only a small set of clothes to choose from, I usually get a set of clothes from my wardrobe that I feel comfortable wearing on that day. It has become a daily habit that does not use up any of my energy, leaving more energy for the more important decisions of that day.
What to eat
Wasting time deciding what to eat and buy was a necessary evil. To be honest, I was way too overwhelmed by my leadership responsibilities during my first years as a manager to be able to think about anything else.
For ten years, I tried to improve something every month. I started by trying to do groceries for the week ahead. I did not always succeed, but it did make life easier.
Wanting to do all of my groceries for the week ahead also meant deciding what to eat ahead of time.
I started to standardize my breakfast. Every day a bowl of oatmeal with some fruits. After a while, I started to add some unsalted nuts to prevent me from feeling too hungry after only a couple of hours.
I then started standardizing my lunch, snacks, and dinner.
Many years later, this habit has formed into a well-oiled machine:
My wife and I share a google docs grocery list based on the products we eat on a weekly basis. We have an overview of our daily dinners for the coming seven days, translating into the products we need to buy.
Every evening I prepare our breakfast for the following day. Every Sunday, I prepare our lunch and snacks for the upcoming week. We do our grocery shopping two times a week.
This system has minimized our decision-making regarding the food that we eat. I love trying out new food (we currently cook many meals by Andrew Bernard), but if I do not feel like thinking about what to eat, I know we can always fall back on our system.
More importantly, food seems to distract me less.
I used to use food to regulate my emotions. If I had a tough day ahead, I would start my day with a chocolate bar to soothe my nerves. Because lunch and dinner were not planned, I would waste time and money eating out during lunch and again at dinner.
The more stress I experienced, the more we would eat out. Only after standardizing our meals did I learn that the arrow of causality pointed two ways.
Not having the option to eat out because my lunch and dinner were already planned saved time and stabilized my stress levels more than I could imagine. Apparently, I did not only regulate my emotions with food, but the food was deregulating my emotions. Food was as much part of the problem as an imagined solution.
I purposely talk about habits because making these changes take time; at least, it did for me.
I accepted the way I lived as the best I could do at that moment and tried to improve a little bit every month, which I keep doing to this day.
Habit #2: Exercise and Eat Healthily
I know, I know.
Nothing new under the sun here. You already know you should (probably) move more and eat more healthily.
But.
Does it really matter? And is it really that important?
Yes,
Let’s start with WHY I exercise and do my best to eat healthily, and then we move on to the HOW.
WHY should you exercise and eat healthily?
As a leader, we must battle many psychological tigers at work.
We build up physical tension during the performance of our responsibilities, and if we do not have a proper outlet, this can lead to burnout.
My evolutionary-adapted human body will prime itself for a fight-or-flight response in preparation for a difficult conversation.
Luckily we do not have to fight our peers to get stuff done, but this does leave me with the build up physical tension.
This is where my workouts come in. It is the best outlet for stress I have yet to find.
It is not my motivation to live longer and to stay fit that pushes me to work out three times a week, but the weekly experience of stress management that I experience.
Without my workouts, the stress builds up to a level that disrupts my performance as a leader and human being.
Similarly, I am intrinsically motivated to eat healthily. I used to regulate my emotions using food, making matters worse instead of better.
I always thought I needed my chocolate to feel better, but now I do not. The more healthy I eat, the more emotionally stable I have become, which is an experience I would never have predicted.
HOW to get yourself to exercise and eat healthily?
The first step is to see the process of living more healthily as a habit. It is not the doing that is the habit but the process of continual improvement.
When it comes to exercise, I am a believer in doing what works for you. Start with moving ‘ naturally’: walk, cycle, take the stairs, etc.
Then experiment with what might work for you. Talk with friends and co-workers, and ask what they do on a regular basis to keep their bodies in movement. Perhaps you can join a friend in their yoga class, or you join a dance class together with your partner.
Do not search for a quick fix. Start from where you are, run experiments to see what works for you, and expand on your success.
The same holds for eating more healthily. It all starts with eating foods you love. Food is always emotional. Certain dishes have meaning because it is what you grew up eating, and other food makes you feel at ease because of their impeccable flavors.
Once you know what you love to eat, you can try to substitute certain foods that deliver a similar experience.
An example: I learned that I craved comfort food Friday night. That was the main reason we always ended up eating out. So I started experimenting with homemade comfort food dinners that were ready in 20min. My go-to place for inspiration is youtube, google comfort food in 20 minutes, and you get many options.
This is my Friday dish: Quinoa with Sweet and Sour Chickpeas.
It saturates my end-of-the-week sweet tooth.
When it comes to making lasting changes in our habits, I like to refer to the moral of the story of the Hammer and the Rock:
The Rock represents all the obstacles we experience towards achieving the desired habit, and our experiments are the Hammer. Breaking the rock into smaller pieces is akin to reaching your goal.
While you hammer the rock, you will experience no change to the rock for a very long time. This does not mean nothing is changing on the inside of the rock. Only after a very long time of hammering the rock will it eventually break into all of the smaller pieces, just as one day you will have made the change in your habits that you longed for.
Habit #3: Sleep
I need my 8 hours of sleep every night.
If I get 7 hours of sleep, I can still function; with 6 hours, I am a mess.
You might think you only need 6 hours a night, but I am afraid you have become used to performing at a level that is not optimal.
The more time and effort I put into ensuring 8 hours of solid sleep, the higher my energy levels became.
Working in a 24/7 business and being a father of a one-year-old is not always easy, but still very doable.
This is what I do:
- I prioritize sleep. It is more important than watching television, reading, and, at times, more important than quality time with my wife. Sleep is fundamental to everything else that I do; if necessary I can always plan ahead, watching a specific show on television and spending meaningful time with my better half.
- I go to bed at the same time every day. Including the weekend. 21:00 PM I will start my routine.
- I get out of bed at the same time every day. 6 AM, including the weekend.
- I have a solid bedtime routine. I will brush my teeth, floss, clean my face, read a book for 30–60 minutes, and sleep.
- I stay away from too much caffeine. My only source of caffeine is espresso. I drink a maximum of 3 espressos a day and no coffee past 14:00 PM.
The above list of behaviors is also the iterative process I followed throughout a couple of years to eventually have a healthy sleep habit. When looked at in a vacuum, my sleep routine might give the illusion I have a militaristic discipline; trust me, I don’t.
It is the culmination of years of experimenting with what works for me, disregarding what does not and keeping what does. Following this routine does not take any effort and ensures I keep my energy levels high for optimal leadership performance.
Start from where you are, experiment with one aspect of your sleep, such as your caffeine intake, and then go from there.
Habits: an iterative process
My main takeaway message is that none of the above habits happened overnight. They are all the result of the underlying habit of continual improvement.
It all starts with accepting your current habits and, through experimentation, trying to improve your situation.
It is a profoundly personal journey; what works for me might not work for you.
I grew up in a family that loved to cook, and that’s why my path toward eating more healthily looks the way it does. An alternative path might be to try out different delivery services that deliver healthy weekly meals, saving you the time and effort of planning, grocery shopping, and cooking.
Whatever works for you is what you should stick with.
As long as you do not forget to Have Fun along the way!
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