I've been asked a lot lately how do I find time to do so many activities such as reading 3-4 books a week, running multiple business ventures, go to the gym 5-6 times a week, make YouTube videos, write these articles and coach almost 20 clients online.
So I decided to write a short article about this topic and also share some findings from a book I've recently read. The topic is mostly lifestyle but it's also related to health and fitness.
What most people don't realize is that we all have the same amount of hours and the only difference is the amount of focus and energy each person has.
You can’t really manage time, it's fixed.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day
Instead, adopt better ways and build habits to use your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy more efficiently.
The Secret Source of Infinite Energy Most Never Find
How can you go the gym after spending 8 hours at work? How do you work after gym? How do you have the energy to manage your diet, and keep track of all that stuff? If you're wondering… here's how.
What I noticed a few years ago is a very simple fact, people who are very clear on who they are and are in alignment with their goals tend to be bursting with energy.
They don't leak energy on emotional outbursts, worrying how other people perceive them, maintain an egoistic identity etc… and by not wasting all this energy they can channel it all to be more focused and reach any goal much faster than an average Joe complaining that days just pass by.
Imagine just how much mental energy you spend on absorbing irrelevant information (TV, news, Facebook etc…), if you'd cut this out just for a few days in your week I can guarantee you'll see improvements in all areas of life.
Why does this happen? Well simply put instead of having your brain waste glucose (energy) producing thought loops about the latest Hollywood actress sex tape you can actually focus on thinking about more productive things.
So when I say I don't watch TV or listen to the radio I'm essentially freeing up a lot of energy that can be then allocated to pursue higher life goals, like learning how to manage my diet better or improve my exercise technique which eventually compounded into a huge success for my health and fitness.
It Actually Isn't All About Hard Work
You'll read a lot today about working hard, and unlike most addictions, this is often admired, encouraged and materially well-rewarded.
The Japanese have a word, karoshi, meaning “death from overwork.” Most industrial accidents happen when people have been working for too long without a break. When space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, NASA officials’ decision to go ahead with the launch came after 20 hours of continuous work!!
I know some of you reading this might think of yourself as hard workers, and there's nothing bad about that. Certainly, by having great work ethic you'll go far in life and without it, there's not much success waiting for you… BUT here's the catch.
If you work hard all the time and don't have periods of relaxation your level of engagement at that work is dropping dramatically over time.
This means you're gonna require more energy and willpower to focus on doing the same task that used to be very engaging.
The thing that used to renew your energy is not a burden. Staying engaged is one of the key elements of optimal performance and it's not possible to achieve engagement purely through hard work, there has to be a balance between exertion of energy and recuperation of the same.
The most successful and disciplined people understand these concepts and are always flowing between periods of hard work and those of renewal. They are fully aware of the natural need for quiet times and reflection.
This means being able to say “NO” to the next big task and relax, go out, watch a movie, spend some quality time with friends and family.
Without the period of relaxation, you'll burn out and burnt out people don't have great ideas.
Want more to have more creative ideas? A study found out where people actually were when they got their best ideas. Most said the garden, the gym, watching a movie, or similar places, almost none of them reported while working. Keep this in mind next time you're stuck with a problem.
How Does This Relate To Health & Fitness?
By now you probably realized that it's as important to have a good recovery system in place as it is to have a good workout and nutrition plan to progress in terms of your physical performance.
This is one of the core principles of progress in your training and the ideas I've presented in this article are related to that core concept.
You need periods of hard work and you need periods of recovery, this is the basis of every workout routine and I just realized how little people apply this in other areas of their life.
2-Step Process To Optimize Your Energy Management
There's basically 2 steps to becoming more efficient:
Step number one is to stop wasting time on things that don't move you forward. This goes back to the fact that having clear goals is an infinite source of energy.
Life is long if you know how to use it. As Seneca says in his book On the Shortness of Life “It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
The majority of people waste a lot of their time on meaningless tasks rather than spend that same time improving themselves. So think about how much time you waste and allocate more toward your goals, even if you do this only a little you'll notice a huge difference.
Step number two is when you do have the time to be able to fully focus your energy on the task at hand. Having the time and being unfocused is the same as not having time at all, the result is the same.
High performers have the ability to focus, step into a flow state and accomplish more in one hour than some people do in a week.
This kind of work is very exhausting thus they realize that life is a series of such sprints, changing between periods of full focused immersion and periods of recovery.
I hope you got value out of the article.
Thanks for reading and lastly I wanna share some quotes from the book that inspired me to write this article. Make sure to get the book, link & title is provided below!
Quotes from one of my favorite books on this topic:
“Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.”
“The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have.”
“The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.”
“Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunities for being.”
“To maintain a powerful pulse in our lives, we must learn how to rhythmically spend and renew energy.”
The book is The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz.
-Mario
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