It’s mid way through January and the point at which most people’s new year goals have been forgotten. The gyms aren’t as busy, dry
January’s become wet.
Scrolling replaced the books we were going to read.
The problem isn’t our ability to commit it’s the way we think about change.
Most our goals are set to achieve an external market of success. “I want to be thin (so people think I’m thin and think better of me)”, “I want to read a book a week (so I can talk about the book and people will think I’m smart)”. When we evaluate the goals we set, often they are set without connection to our values and beliefs. Action not aligned with our values creates conflict and stress for our unconscious - and we all know what the natural reaction to stress is. Fight or flight!
This year let’s try something different. Let’s align our behaviour with our values. Values is something we think about a lot in sport. Even in an individual sport like boxing we’ll agree team values and the behaviour linked to them. When we hold ourselves accountable to our values the behaviours needed to achieve our goals inevitably follows.
I value health, leads to a behaviour of nourishing food choices inadvertently resulting in improved body composition. The goal is weight loss, the action is linked to the value of health.
What are you values? Or the things that you believe to be valuable in a meaningful life? Make a list.
What are the behaviours that align with that value right now?
Now map out how you spend your energy each day. What are the tasks/thoughrs/behaviours that consume your conscious? Does the allocation of your energy align with your values? At WorkAthlete we are less concerned about mapping time and more concerned about energy.
Productivity and success occurs when we are able to spend our energy on the tasks that matter most and to do that we need to understand the peaks and troughs of our natural ultradian rhythm.
You have your values and your current energy spend.
Now map out your energy over the day. Where do you hit a trough and where are your peaks, the moments of high energy?
So now we look at our values and the actions associated with them. What are the none negotiable activities that need space in your day?
Which require the most and which the least amounts of energy?
Map out those tasks across your day. Place the high energy tasks in the moments of the day when you have the most available energy and the low energy tasks when your reserves are waning.
Our energy naturally fluctuates as a result of metabolic activity requiring periods of reset across the day. There are things we can do to support that reset. Having a walk, doing some mindful breathing, connecting with people. You’ll notice when you hit that trough - it’s biscuit o’clock. Those spots in the day where you feel like reaching for a food hit even though you’re not really hungry or where you become fidgety. What are the tasks that energise you and where do they need to be in your day?
When we plan our day based on our values and our energy we take away the fight - the fight against our misaligned actions and the fight to be productive at times of the day where productivity is not optimised.
To summarise:
Know your values and the actions that match them.
Map out your energy across the day
Allocate values led actions based on their energy demands
Schedule in some daily energisers
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