Optimal Performance Secrets: How Top Executives Use Energy Cycles to Excel
How many of you have hit an age when pulling an all-nighter just doesn’t work anymore? At some point, it dawns on us all that if we want to perform at our best, our lifestyle counts or our energy plummets. I’m not talking about turning into a hermit and adopting ascetic habits. You can tweak your day-to-day to show up with more verve by understanding the nature of cycles.
Our energy levels contribute to how much we accomplish. They shape how we get along with the people around us. You don’t need to move into a cave and give up [all] the booze to have lots of vitality. You must, however, take a few things into account, particularly, that we are cyclic beings. We thrive on rising and falling.
Cycles Are Our Friends
Like day and night, we require bursts of high intensity and times to chill out on a daily—even hourly—basis. We need to understand and use the on/off button for nearly everything in our lives.
Practically speaking, this means:
Get more sleep, it’s the counterpart to being awake. To power up more, power down with the same intensity.
Refresh and reset once an hour. This will dramatically improve how you feel and allow you to be dialed in when you need it.
Feast and fast. Eat varied, seasonal, nutrient-dense meals, and give your digestion a break (12 hours is a good start—roughly the time between dinner at 8 p.m. and breakfast at 8 a.m., for example). And don’t always eat the same thing.
Respect light and darkness. Get out in the sun when you can (particularly in the morning) and dim your lights after dusk (better yet, use blue light blocking glasses).
Move more and recover more.
Acknowledge all your emotions (yes, the negative ones too) to be able to highlight the positive ones. Happy people are more productive.
Know your hormones. Cortisol, for example. When it’s in a healthy rhythm, cortisol is highest in the morning to give us energy to get going, keep inflammation low, and peak the immune response. It naturally drops throughout the day, bottoming out before bed allowing us to wind down into a rest-and-repair phase—when not disrupted, that is.
Women can learn more about how to make the most of their cycles In the FLO: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life by Alisa Vitti.
Men have hormonal cycles too. Testosterone levels tend to peak first thing in the morning then diminish over the course of the day—though exercise can cause fleeting spikes. There are seasonal changes too.
Don’t knock your cycles. Observe them. Use them to your advantage.
Daily Energy Hack
All this talk about cycles brings me to transitions. We lose mucho energy when we switch from one thing to another. We often hold on to what we were doing before, which means we spend time trying to do two things at once—we’re not made to multitask (see article), so this eats up a lot of fuel.
Create space between tasks. Bring one undertaking to a full stop. Establish an airlock—a space of nothingness. Then move your entire focus on to the next item on the agenda saving you energy and fulfilling your rest and reset requirements.
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