What if I told you that managing time isn't the secret to a fulfilling, high-performing
life, but managing your energy is?
All this time I was aiming to create more time, when maybe I've had it wrong.
In today's episode, we're breaking down key takeaways from the book The Power of Full
Engagement by Jim Lorre and Tony Schwartz.
We're going to explore how your energy, not your time, is your most precious resource.
How aligning your performance pyramid of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy can
unlock performance, health, and happiness like never before.
We'll review how to prioritize activities that fuel you and how this can help you avoid
energy drains and add in more zest for life.
So grab your coffee or tea, lace up your walking shoes, grab onto that steering wheel, whatever
you're doing while you're listening, and let's talk about how to fuel the life you actually
want, one energized moment at a time.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of LifeSnacks Lesson Plan.
I'm Rachel and I started this podcast during my 29th and last year as a high school teacher.
Goal of my work with LifeSnacks Lesson Plan as well as my Live and Learn Patreon is to
create a connection where we are all teachers.
We all have lessons and stories to share that can help others.
I'm so fortunate to be able to extend the four walls of my previous classroom to an
unlimited audience where we can all learn from each other.
And my guests are some of the most inspirational people with the best stories and lessons I
know, which is why I want to share them with you.
Their words are something everyone should hear.
It is my hope that you are able to take away something from each episode to apply to your
own life, whether that be a career search, path to a more fulfilling life, or new ideas
on current topics.
After collapsing from exhaustion in 2007, Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington
Post and Thrive Global, transformed her approach to work and life, focusing on sleep, mindfulness,
and purpose.
How many of us feel like we need a break from life?
A 12-hour nap?
Our hustle culture and pulls on our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy has
us all on a fast path to burnout.
In the book The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lohr and Tony Schwartz and Other Research,
today I want to talk about how we can get off the hamster wheel a bit to try to replenish
our energy.
To start this conversation, we need to understand the difference between energy and time.
I know everyone says that time is the biggest currency, and I actually agreed with this
until I started doing the research for this episode, where I'm going to argue that energy,
not time, is the fundamental currency.
If you look at this in just the simplest of terms, time is finite, whereas energy can
be expanded and renewed.
Performance, health, and happiness depend on effectively managing energy across multiple
dimensions.
So we're going to look at the difference between energy management versus what we're all familiar
with, time management.
Energy management is the strategic use of your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
energy to achieve sustained performance or health or happiness.
Instead of focusing solely on how many hours you have in a day, which is what I've been
doing, energy management emphasizes how you feel, think, and function throughout the hours
of your day.
So some of the key principles of energy management are that energy can be expanded and renewed,
unlike time.
High performance requires this concept called oscillation, which is cycles of intense focus
or stress followed by recovery or rest.
Learning about this makes me understand why I'm so exhausted after teaching back-to-back
classes with no rest.
Learning tasks with your natural energy rhythms leads to better focus and output, and your
energy levels are influenced by your lifestyle factors, which we all know like sleep, nutrition,
exercise, and your mindset.
We're going to contrast that for a second with time management, which we're maybe all
a little bit more familiar with.
That involves planning and organizing tasks to maximize productivity within a fixed period.
So controlling your schedule, setting deadlines, prioritizing tasks, how many hours in a day
do I have to get X, Y, and Z done?
This usually focuses on efficiency and scheduling, and it assumes that all hours of the day are
equally productive, which I definitely know for myself is not the case.
So time management emphasizes prioritizing your tasks and managing your deadlines of
what needs to get done.
This often leads to over-scheduling and ignores the need for energy renewal.
There's a great side-by-side chart of this that I'm going to share on social media, but
when you approach things from a time management standpoint, you're looking at it as a quantity
of hours and tasks that need to be completed.
But if you are approaching it from an energy management standpoint, then you're looking
at the quality of energy.
Real emotional, mental.
In other words, one approach is just power through, get as much done as quickly as you
can with no regard to how you feel or how you feel at the end, whereas the other one
is going to look at when the peaks of your day, peaks of your energy are, and align that
to your most difficult tasks, and then work in breaks.
So energy management is more sustained performance and sustained well-being, whereas time management
is this maximize productivity in this limited time, because everybody has the mindset that
time is money, we want to get through this as quickly as possible, even if we feel awful
for the rest of the day after.
Another way to think about this is just how we live on an everyday basis.
We have a to-do list, we have a calendar, we have a schedule.
And those are just kind of thrown together like, I have to do this, I have to be here,
this has to get done.
Whereas we're not really looking at the peak times or the best approach for where to put
certain rituals, which is what I want to talk about today.
So it's this idea of like just work continuously within the available hours that you have,
instead of working in alignment with your body and your energy.
So the key question, if you're time management follower is, how am I going to fit this task
into my day?
If you're looking at managing your energy, the question would be, how can I best manage
my energy for this task?
So the benefits of energy management for burnout prevention are that you're prioritizing recovery
instead of these long strenuous periods of work without any breaks.
And if you rearrange your schedule differently, like we'll talk about today, this can prevent
chronic stress, which we know many of us have.
It also leverages your natural energy peaks so that you can actually work more efficiently
and effectively and at a peak level rather than maybe multitasking rushing through something.
So that is a completely different approach.
And it is a whole person approach, meaning you're considering the emotional and spiritual
drivers for the motivation of the tasks that you're completing.
Not just I have to do this even though I don't want to do this or this isn't the best time
to do this or I'm not in the best mind space to do this.
It's just a different approach, which we'll get into today.
And then lastly, it is more sustainable long term.
So it ensures that your performance over the long run is peak performance.
And so when you're dividing things up based on your energy schedule, you're not just focused
on your daily output or how fast you got something done, but how you actually feel at the end
of the day.
So let's talk about an example of this.
So you have to write a report.
You're a student or you're in the corporate world.
You have to write a report.
So if you were to approach this task from a time management approach, you would say, okay,
I think it's going to take me about three hours to write this report.
I've got a break in the afternoon or after school or before bed, I'm going to take those
three hours and write the report, then I'll be done just one block of time.
If you approach that from an energy management standpoint, what you would say to yourself
is when do I feel the most mentally sharp in my day?
Personally for me, that is the morning.
Knock out 90 minutes of time for deep work.
Then take a break, schedule it in for renewal, a walk, a snack, and return refreshed for
another focused session.
Couple of things here that I think we would find is that perhaps what we get done is better
and takes less time because we are at our peak and we know we're going to be having
a renewal break in there.
And so we feel better, research shows that taking a walk activates your brain.
And so you're going to come back to the task unlike in the last 30 minutes of a three hour
block, not during a peak time of your day, you are just going to be setting yourself
up for ideal achievement and results and then not even just getting a task done, but not
feeling completely depleted when it's over.
Okay, so let's talk about one more example, preparing for a presentation.
I mean, this is something teachers have to do, you know, we do three to four presentations
every day, five days a week, right?
Many jobs, you have to prepare for a presentation.
So students have to do this as well.
Time management approach, say, okay, I'm going to allocate two, three, four consecutive hours
the day before the presentation to finalize my slides, rehearse and review my notes.
Regardless of energy levels or how we're feeling, I'm just getting over a terrible
sickness.
If I would have left this something like this to the last minute and I got ill, it would
have been a nightmare, right?
The energy management approach is to break the preparation into focused sessions aligned
with your personal energy peaks.
So if morning is when your highest mental energy like me spend 90 minutes refining your key
points and structuring the presentation while your focus is still sharp, you know, do the
most mentally tasking activities when your mental energy is highest.
I have an energy dip after school, 230 at that time.
So I'm going to have to take a walk, take a break, do some breathing, get outside, change
gears right before I can come back to this.
And then when my energy is back up a little bit, I can rehearse out loud for a certain
amount of time, 45 minutes, let's say, focusing on my delivery and my pacing.
And then when I'm winding down and I'm feeling reflective and calm, I should relax myself,
not go over the slides again, build in a relaxing activity, ensure for proper rest, get off
screens to ensure good sleep, hygiene, and prepare for optimal performance the next day.
You know, in a perfect world because this doesn't always work this way. But if you try
this approach with something that you have coming up and again, I'm just speaking from
my job standpoint, this doesn't work great with teaching, although I know there are a
lot of teachers who work walk breaks or when it's nice enough time outside breaks for the
kids and for themselves. And I think that's great. But if you can even just try this on
a small scale, or I've been trying this on the weekend, kind of like I know, right when
I get up is the best time to tackle grading for the weekend. Because if I leave it till
Sunday night, there's no way I'll just be upset and angry and tired. And that's no way
to unwind. I've done that to myself many times. And so think about how you structure this
on a weekend, or in an evening or just a day during the week, focusing from a time management
perspective versus an energy management perspective. Now that we kind of understand just like
this concept and the differences between these two approaches, I want to dig into some more
terminology of the book, the power of full engagement. So there's this idea of the performance
pyramid, or the four dimensions of energy. And I've mentioned them already, but I'll
repeat them physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And each level builds on the one
below it. Meaning you need a strong foundation at each stage in order to achieve long term
success and fulfillment. So I'm just going to break down each of the four categories
and we can kind of look at, you know, grade ourselves maybe with how we take care of these
in our daily lives. And then we'll get into again, some more reflection and application.
Okay, so we'll start with physical energy, which is kind of the foundation of your performance,
right? If you're sick, if you didn't get enough sleep, you know, physical energy can
affect everything else. It affects your emotional resilience, your mental focus, your spiritual
connection. You know, it all becomes more difficult if you are depleted physically.
So we are already know we're supposed to be getting seven to eight hours of good sleep,
right? We know that we're supposed to be fueling our bodies with whole foods, and drinking
a lot of water, getting movement to reduce fatigue, resting and recovering. This isn't
just after exercise, but this is actually incorporating in your day as much as possible.
Short breaks of five to 10 minutes after every 90 to 120 minutes of focused work. And sometimes
easier said than done, right? But I'm going to talk about with this a new concept that
I learned as well. We've all heard of circadian rhythms, right? With like your natural waking
cycles and your natural sleep cycles and how sunlight can affect that. I learned about
ultradian rhythms and the importance of taking breaks to rejuvenate. So we're going to get
back to that later. But that's something else new in my research for this episode that I
think is fascinating. Let's move on to the second pillar, which is emotional energy.
And this is the quality of your energy. So your emotional energy fuels your performance
by influencing how well you handle pressure and stress. So if you have a lot of positive
emotions like gratitude, compassion, optimism, these things expand your energy, which is
why now there's all of this research coming out about gratitude journals and practicing
compassion and positive thinking. Well, negative emotions like frustration or anger or anxiety
drain your energy. Been there, done that. So just having self-awareness and recognizing
your emotions and their triggers. Step one, regulating your emotions. So recognizing, oh,
here's a feeling. What is the best way for me to confront it, not repress it, and then
work with it. So whether that's deep breathing or mindfulness or a walk, a snack, you know,
whatever the case might be, how can you deal with those emotions? And then having positive
connections. So leaning into supportive relationships, having people, you know, if I find myself
in a funk, I have to change that by seeking someone out, changing my surroundings or environment,
and then, you know, kind of rewiring where my brain was going. Gratitude, obviously, we
mentioned is a big part of this for people as well, reflecting on just positives to boost
your mood. And then, you know, tuning into your emotional intelligence. So paying more
attention to just the messaging that's going through your brain, how are you processing
messages, being aware of like, do you hear a lot of internal negative messaging, and
then reframing that. I've had to catch myself in this recently, I was like doing really
well. And then I go through spurts where it just, I don't know if it's the dark days in
Wisconsin and the cold or what, but so let's just do a really quick example here. So there's
a co your co parenting, and you're managing a challenging conversation with an ex partner.
All right, some people have been here with me. And you know that it could be potentially
triggering any difficult conversation, right? This is just one example, but there are many
triggering conversations. And if you know that is a possibility, you can say to yourself,
hey, I'm aware, I'm going to take some deep breaths, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going
to use some, you know, positive messaging about the good things that I have to come
out of this situation, and just be aware that it could happen and be patient with yourself
and try to approach it head on. Okay, so that kind of feeds directly into your mental energy.
And that definitely determines your ability to concentrate, to be creative, to solve problems,
you know, to do any sort of focused, sustained mental task takes mental energy. And a lot
of us have very mentally taxing days, right? I used to love saying that I was, you know,
the queen of multitasking, but I have a lot of balls in the air with, you know, especially
what I have going on in my life right now. It is actually best to avoid multitasking and
focusing on one task at a time. So if you go back to what we've already talked about
in the episode, like doing one thing well, and then replenishing and moving on. And I
think, you know, for being honest, we would say that if we did more of that, we would
get done quicker, and probably our work quality would go up. And then just looking at again,
how we prioritize when we're doing our most difficult tasks. And if we could in any way
align them to our most favorable times of the day, we would be doing ourselves a favor.
So we'd have more mental flexibility, we would be able to adapt to challenges better. We
would, if we worked in breaks, we would probably be more calm during this, which makes us more
productive, right? It increases our mental energy. So this is also where people would
suggest things like meditation, setting clear boundaries or timelines to minimize distractions.
And creating rituals and doing, you know, setting your schedule so that it is good for
you as much as possible. And when you are fresh, freshest, you know, having your to-do
list, these are the things that must get done today. These are the hardest things. And so
I'm going to do the hardest things when I have the best mental energy. Another example
here for this, if we're talking about, let's say, oh, like a content creator who needs to
record podcasts in a distraction-free environment. So I've already had to move where I was recording
once because of loud noises in the background during today's episode. So you have to black
out time as a creator, you know, when the lighting is good or when the environment is
quiet, and I can concentrate, you know, it's interesting when I'm either writing or recording,
when I am learning that, you know, those timeframes are best depending on what I'm doing. If it's
a lot of research, then I need more mental focus. If I feel like I want to be more calm,
I've been recording podcasts more at night, sort of as a reflective thing. So it's just
a reflection for me personally. So think about that for yourself as well. All right. Spiritual
energy is the last component. And this comes from having a sense of purpose and aligning
your daily actions with your core values, just something we talk a lot about on Life's
Next Lesson Plan. This is our deepest source of motivation and sustains our energy when
we hit challenges. Okay. So our core values are what truly matter to us and why. We try
as much as possible to make value-driven decisions and have value-driven actions. So this is
an alignment with my values. So I am going to do this. This is not an alignment with
my values. And so it is not a priority for me. And I know that's not always possible,
but to think more along those lines. And there's a component here too called legacy thinking,
which is reflecting on how you want to be remembered. And this is very, during my existential
crisis here of leaving the classroom after 29 years. This is really interesting, especially
after reaching out to former students and former colleagues and especially the colleagues
who are in retirement now and their identities have kind of changed. Really interesting that
you only start engaging in activities that align with these values and this purpose and
your legacy. I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. So in this component, you explore
the importance of your purpose and how you only say yes to things that align with your
purpose and you draw energy from those things, right? Like recording a podcast after a long
day of teaching and then driving home for an hour. It's another thing. But I actually
enjoy the act of researching and learning about new things and sharing them when I'm
not dealing with people who aren't listening and I have to grade and I have to worry about
them taking a test on this. And especially when I'm interviewing someone who is teaching
me something, I get energy even though normally as an introvert, I get drained from that.
These are deep meaningful conversations and those give me energy. So because it fits my
purpose and my values, even though it could be considered work, although it's really
a hobby at this point, it's aligning with my values and so I'm drawing energy from that,
which is interesting. So an example here, we have an entrepreneur who left a corporate
job to create resources for educators who feels energized by the mission of making teachers
lives easier and more fulfilling. I see these people on LinkedIn all the time, right? There's
so many transitioning teacher sites now, like we can get you a job doing this, that and
the other thing and sign of our times, I guess, but it's kind of what I'm saying with this
podcasting venture is just if it is aligned with your core values, then you should be
able to draw energy from it, not to say that it's not taxing or work or takes time, but
it is fulfilling and it helps serve your purpose. So these four levels need to be balanced
and in harmony. And if you neglect one area, it's going to affect all the others like we've
talked about. So if you're not feeling well, it drains your emotional resilience. If you
have unmanaged emotions, you know, you've got something going on personally, we all
know this disrupts our mental focus, right? And if we have a lack of mental focus, it
prevents us from prioritizing our purpose and our values, right? So keeping all of these
things aligned are what help us from becoming drained. So that's a lot to process. And I
want to get us to a break here in a second, but I just want to kind of show you how this
might look in a day. And there are a lot of iterations of this, but a daily routine that
supports all four facets of the performance pyramid, like if we just break it up morning,
middle of the day evening. So in the morning, if you are able to start your day with some
sort of exercise or movement to hit the physical component, then you do a little bit of gratitude
journaling, which hits your emotional component or meditation, mindfulness. And then you
plan your top tasks for the day. That's your mental component. And then you reflect on
your goals as your spiritual component, you have a balanced morning, and you can pick
and choose what you put in there. But you're paying attention to each of the four areas
of the pyramid. Midday, for example, you have a healthy meal that's physical, you connect
with a colleague that's emotional, you have a focused work session that's mental, and
then you can again have a reflection, maybe a reset for spiritual renewal. In the evening,
you have some sort of wind down routine for physical. I love to get my foam roller out.
That seems to really help or go for a walk. Reflect on your wins from the day, which is
emotional. You can do some reading or learning, which is mental, and then spend some time
with a loved one or speak to them on the phone or something, which is spiritual. So if you
think about the different facets of your day, and how you can balance out so that you have
each of those four components, you're managing your energy, not just your time, which is going
to enhance your productivity and your overall personal well-being.
Okay, so we're going to take a little break. And then when we come back, I'm going to talk
about these cool, ultra-dean rhythms that I learned about. We're going to make a little
list, things that invigorate us, things that drain us. I'm going to give you some more
real life examples from research, and then we're going to get you out of here with some
action steps. So I'll be back in a bit.
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So before we come back from break, I'm going to answer two Ask the Teacher Anything questions.
The first question was, how do you balance personal growth with the demands of creating
content for your podcast? Can I answer that with not well? It's been a challenge just
because I'm learning so many new things at one time while I'm still teaching full time
and trying to wind down a career. If I take my own advice from this episode, there's a
lot of emotion that comes with that. There's a lot of physical demands. It's just a lot
of extra workload. So I've been doing my best. I'll just say I have been trying to prioritize
things. That's why I was so interested in this episode because I always operated from
a time management perspective and now I can see that that's not the best way to do things.
As I look at whatever I'm going to be doing next and how I'm going to be structuring my
days, I would like to have more freedom in how I can structure my days because living
by bells that tell you when you can eat and go to the bathroom and go outside is difficult
after 29 years and every job has some aspect of that I know. But just thinking about how
to design things better. If you know more, you can do better. So we're in progress there.
Second question, how do you hope Life's Next Lesson Plan impacts your listeners? I'm a
journalism teacher. I'm an English teacher. I love stories. I love connecting. I love
reading and storytelling can help connect us and help us become more empathetic. I think
the more we can get out of our own experiences and hear other people's experiences is good
for us. We need more connection. We need more empathy. We need to feel less alone in our
journeys. I just hope that there's a lot of professional podcasts that I listen to and
books that we all read and we all hear the same stories. It's my hope that all of these
tremendous lives that I've been able to be a part of, bringing awareness to the stories
that wouldn't normally be heard, that's what keeps me going. I don't know for how long.
I think that remains to be seen how impactful it is, I guess, but that's at the heart of
it. I kind of go back to the very first lesson that I teach in beginning journalism with
Humans of Homestead and Brandon Stanton, just going up to people in Central Park and asking
them questions about their lives and how people gravitated toward that. These are strangers.
Again, these are stories that people would not typically hear. Everybody has a story
and everybody's story should be appreciated on some level. To me, I just feel really lucky
to be able to share the stories of the people that I know. I would love, I just had somebody
reach out and say, hey, you should interview my friend, here's his name, reach out to him.
Awesome, because if you think someone has a fascinating story, I would love to be able
to share and connect with them and just spread more stories. Hopefully, that's what the impact
has been and will continue to be. We are back from break and ready to do some work on identifying
our own personal energy sources and drains and learning about all trade in rhythms, this
cool new thing that I'm learning about. We are going to make a list. If you need to pause
and get paper or pull up a doc or you can always come back and do this later, but we're
just going to have two columns. I'm going to do this also. This is our personal energy
audit. On our list, we're going to have on the left things that invigorate us and then
on the right things that drain us. For the purposes of time, I'm just going to take the
ones that are at the top of my head. I might not have an exhaustive list here. Again, you
can work on your list over time. Things that invigorate me for sure are exercise, fresh
air, walks, kayaking, boating, meditating, podcast interviews, good music. If I have
those, those things invigorate me, make me happy, give me energy. Things that drain me,
grading, sitting inside all day, answering countless emails, small talk, listening to
whining or excuses. Okay, so it says a lot, right? I'm sure your list will be eye opening
or maybe not too surprising for you. All right, so this is where we want to talk about aligning
our tasks with our natural energy peaks and troughs and where we put things that drain
us and how to break that up with things that invigorate us, right? So this is the key to
managing your energy for peak performance are these ultradian rhythms, which are natural
cycles that occur in our bodies every 90 to 120 minutes. These rhythms influence our energy
levels, our focus and our performance. So unlike circadian rhythms, which are on a 24
hour cycle, the sleep wake cycle, ultradian rhythms happen multiple times throughout the
day and affect how long we can stay mentally and physically sharp. So for 90 to 120 minutes,
your body and brain are in a period of high energy and focus, making that the ideal window
for deep work, problem solving and creative tasks. After that peak, you naturally experience
a 20 minute dip where energy and concentration decline. This is your body's signal to rest,
recover, rejuvenate, relax. If you ignore this dip, which we often have to, we push through
it with caffeine or sheer willpower. This leads to fatigue, irritability and reduced
performance over time. Yeah, you can say that again. Okay, so the authors, Jim Loran, Tony
Schwartz highlight that understanding and aligning with these rhythms can dramatically
improve your productivity and well being. So instead of forcing ourselves to power through
an eight hour work day, try as much as you can to work with your body's natural energy
cycles. Okay, again, in an ideal world, right, we would be able to schedule our lives this
way, but as much as possible, just to think about it, bring an awareness to it and work
on blocks of time. So working in a 90 minute focused block, where you schedule your most
important tasks like writing or strategic thinking or recording podcasts, grading, you know,
your draining activities, try to minimize your distractions during this brain peak time
and give it your all. But you must take a 15 to 20 minute renewal break after each 90
to 120 minute session. You must go for a walk, you must take something off your invigorating
list, stretch, do a light exercise, meditate, deep breathe, have a healthy snack, hydrate,
connect with a loved one. You must do that. And then match your tasks to your energy levels.
So your high focused tasks should occur during your peak energy periods and take your routine
or administrative tasks, those that don't take a lot of brain power. They're not as
draining during your lower energy times again, as much as possible. So if I'm going to apply
my ultradian aligned approach to podcast recording in the morning when I have peak energy is
when I should be doing my research and writing or scripting my episode, which requires more
deep focus, then in mid morning, I would have a 20 minute break in an ideal world to step
outside for fresh air or light movement. Late morning for renewed focus, I could record
the episode when my mental energy is rebounding. And then when my energy dips in the afternoon,
I could edit or respond to listener comments, any tasks are requiring less intense focus,
like sometimes this is when I'll just craft a couple social media posts or something, you
know, using the scripts that I already have to then, you know, just kind of wordsmiths
some things. You could share how understanding ultradian rhythms helps you in other areas
like we've talked about co-parenting, this could be managing family dynamics or dating.
So again, with co-parenting, you can use high energy times for emotionally demanding conversations
or even scripting how to approach those conversations. So one gave me the suggestion for dating in
your fifties to plan meaningful dates or connections when you feel most energized, right? And if
you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of, you know, 50 year old woman is recognizing
how your hormonal shifts interact with your ultradian dips and plan your rest accordingly,
if only, right? So, you know, lesson planning or grading, these things that take maybe more
sustained focus would be best for me to do in the morning and then schedule like a short
dog walk or something. And then, you know, come back at it. But really interesting to
think about your day in terms of these 90 to 100 minute chunks of time, isn't it?
I wanted to share a couple of real life success stories of this in action and then leave you
with some action steps today to wrap this up. So I wanted to give you another individual
example and then a couple of group examples of what this looks like. I had talked about
Ariana Huffington at the beginning of the episode, but another individual Serena Williams,
who, you know, I'm sure all of you are familiar with the professional tennis player, she uses
energy management with her training and her rest in order to, you know, balance all these
four areas. So she prioritizes sleep, practices mindfulness, leans on her support system.
And this shows how her physical preparation and emotional well-being obviously operate
at peak performance. So she creates rituals for recovery with her sleep routines and her
mindfulness practices to avoid burnout. And Ariana Huffington, who I mentioned earlier
in the episode who crashed and burned her new venture is actually organized around this
idea of optimizing your peak performance times and then building in breaks for yourself.
Two organizations that operate this way as well are Google. So they want to emphasize
energy renewal at the workplace. And their workplace culture is known for encouraging
this. So their campus has nap pods, meditation rooms, fitness centers, and they acknowledge
that employees who can rest and recharge perform better by prioritizing physical and mental
energy, Google fosters innovation and sustained productivity. You know, now I've also heard
that they have like on site dry cleaners and all the conveniences to make you not ever
want to leave the workplace. But to their credit, they do have these recharge stations
and they definitely are putting their money where their mouths are that they feel it is
important to have these breaks. The Navy SEALs, obviously an intense group and huge need for
focus and balancing high stress missions with recovery. So they teach controlled breathing.
They do mental resilience exercises. They structure downtime after peak performance
times. And obviously they have very positive outcomes in their training programs and the
caliber of the recruits that they have their increased productivity and improved well being.
I mean, if that isn't a place where you could easily run yourself into the ground physically,
emotionally, mentally, right, you have to balance that out and keep those four foundational
areas all in play, right? So here are our takeaways for this episode. I want you to
perform a personal energy audit over the next week. Look at each day, you know, might be
Groundhog Day for you, it feels like, but start with one energy enhancing habit, like
a daily walk or a mindfulness or gratitude journal practice, something like that. Set
aside time for an activity that brings you joy invigorates you, right, aligns with your
personal values, especially if you can build it in after a sustained period of focus and
just really think about how, you know, these 90 to 100 minute chunks of time can be broken
up rather than I'm going to work on this for four hours without a break. Okay, and then
pay attention to the work quality that comes out of that and then also how you feel when
you're done and then how you feel about approaching the next task the next time you have to do
it, right, when you're maybe restructuring it in a little bit of a different way. So
these practical strategies, a lot of them were newer to me and again, sometimes, you
know, they're easier to implement than others, but I thought a lot of it was new and interesting
to me. And I really thought that, you know, I had my time management down, which apparently
was maybe not the right focus. And I do think that there is something to be said for how
a task makes you feel the time of day, definitely that you approach a task makes a difference.
And so I hope that this was helpful for you today. Thank you again for joining me today.
I want to remind you that if you are looking for additional content, I do have my live
and learn Patreon that you can subscribe to for $5 a month, or you can explore individual
episodes and collections tailored to your interests. You can also gift someone in your
life a membership who enjoys the podcast or who might benefit from one of my series.
My hope is that by hearing these lessons woven in with the real stories of my life, you'll
want deeper connection to the human experience. You can also find me counting down my last
days in the classroom on the Life's Next Lesson Plan YouTube. And you can join us on
my website at Life'sNextLessonPlan.com for a lot of freebies that are attached to past
episodes, as well as all of the podcasts and a place to enter your Ask the Teacher Anything
questions. We'll see you back here next week with another new guest.