At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor

by Carey Nieuwhof

CHAPTER 2 IN A SNAP Even decently rested people who have friends and can bench-press a tiny house are stressed out. Time off won’t heal you when the problem is how you spend your time on. Days off, vacations, and even sabbaticals aren’t a complete solution for an unsustainable pace. A sustainable pace is the solution for an unsustainable pace. The Stress Spiral happens when you let yourself live with unfocused time, unleveraged energy, and hijacked priorities. It leaves you feeling overwhelmed, overcommitted, and overworked. Unfocused time happens when you do your most important things randomly, squeezing them into leftover slots or sometimes not tackling them at all. The reason other people don’t value your time is because you don’t. Unleveraged energy springs from failing to cooperate with your personal energy levels as they rise and fall over the course of the day. Hijacked priorities happen when you allow other people to determine what you get done. The Thrive Cycle focuses your time, leverages your energy, and realizes your priorities so you can be at your best. It ensures you live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. Focusing your time helps you get more accomplished in less time. Rather than competing with your energy levels, cooperate with them. When you leverage your energy, you’ll realize you’re capable of producing not just more work but much better work than you thought possible. Calendaring your energy zones, priorities, and key relationships wil...