This photo was taken almost a year ago. A lot has happened since then – maybe I’ll get to that in time – but it feels the right time to start back on getting things right again.
A few years back, I had a chat with a bloke in a sauna at the David Lloyd club. I was a member there while rehabilitating from knee surgery. Normally I’d quite like to sit in there for a few minutes after exercising to unwind and breathe. Acknowledging anybody in there but largely trying to keep myself to myself. One day a large chap came in and started talking. Nice chap, Icelandic if I recall. We started talking about things and ended up sharing why I was doing the exercises I was doing. He had noticed my weird knee workouts. He then said to me:
“What’s the most important thing in your life?”
Instinctively I said, my family. He said, imagine this in a quasi-Shwarzennegger accent,
“Wrong!”
He continued.
“YOU are the most important thing. YOU! If you put yourself under others, you become miserable. If you are happy, everybody else will be happy. Because you’re happier, you find time for everyone else. If you’re not happy. Well…
You need to put yourself top of the pyramid. That doesn’t mean you exclude others or only think of yourself. Get yourself right and everything flows from that.”
I never saw him again.
But it’s stuck with me ever since. But as always, things stick around, notes get written, ideas had but a lot stays in the proverbial drawer because life happens.
I started to re-evaluate myself last year. I’d seen Chris Barez-Brown at Silicon Beach before and have enjoyed his thinking and approach ever since. I bought Upping Your Elvis when it came out. I started to do the hacks. They started to make a difference. I realised I was putting myself first. I was feeling healthier and happier.
One of the key things was understanding my own energy rather than focussing on trying to lift others. I needed to learn the rhythms of my own energy. Chris sets out a simple task:
- Spend a week noting your energy levels every hour.
- Score this 1-10.
- Notice the patterns.
- Then design your life around these patterns. e.g. Don’t put heavy meetings when you’re low on energy.
The pattern is really clear for me. Green denotes high energy which is from waking to mid-morning say 11am. I then start to tail off and drop over lunch. A bit of a mid afternoon boost and then done.
I started to put this into practice. It made a tremendous difference. Focus and high effort tasks in the morning. Then have a low energy clean up of email/Slack versus the constant bombardment and distraction. Then save lower energy tasks for later in the day.
It’s quite alarming how much of my life has been designed to be green all the time. The always-on, constant pressure of the advertising business and life. Thow in running your own business and you realise you are not a machine. It’s easy to do 80+hr weeks when you’re in your 20s. But is it the most sensible? Part of it was presenteeism for sure but it was also full of work. Hard work. Enjoyable work. Mostly. But that’s not sustainable. It’s also increasingly getting lower returns because nobody can sustain that level for years. It’s also not putting yourself top of the pyramid and understanding how to get the best out of yourself.
At least by understanding my own rhythms I can attempt to ride the pattern better. Tune things to fit me rather than the other way around.
Time to start again. Now where’s the ladder to get to the top of that pyramid?
