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November 17 - November 26, 2023
According to a study of 7,500 full-time American employees, more than 70 percent of adults in their twenties and thirties are experiencing at least some level of burnout.1
Of the eight hundred leaders gathered, 93 percent identified as having wrestled through some degree of burnout in the last year. Only 7 percent answered “Never.”
If you don’t declare a finish line to your work, your body will.
Stress—which is medically defined as “any intrinsic or extrinsic stimulus that evokes a biological response”1—can apparently do some real damage.
I designed a short burnout quiz that can give you a rough idea of how high your current stress level is. You can take it for free at www.AtYourBestToday.com. The results, while nonscientific, can give you an idea of what your personal burnout level is.
Seasons, after all, have beginnings and endings. If your busy season has no ending, it’s not a season—it’s your life.
As I studied top performers, I realized they moved way past time management and were highly focused on managing not just their time but their energy. Usually they had one thing in common: they did what they were best at when they were at their best.
CHAPTER 1 IN A SNAP The typical formula for growth is as simple as it is stupid: more people equals more hours. Many people are overwhelmed, overcommitted, and overworked doing exactly what they thought they wanted to do with their lives. If you don’t declare a finish line to your work, your body will. You used to have to go to the office to work more. Now, thanks to your phone, the office goes to you. The most prosperous people who ever lived (which is everyone in the developed world in the twenty-first century) have made their lives about survival. Too many people build lives they want to
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Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. —Søren Kierkegaard
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.
Hijacked priorities happen when you allow other people to determine what you get done.
The way to be at your best is to focus your time, leverage your energy, and realize your priorities.
Focusing your time will help you get more accomplished in less time.
The mantra I adopted is so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it. But it’s one that’s guided me now for years and I hope can guide you: “Live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow.”
I regularly evaluate whether I’m thriving in five key areas of my life: spiritual, relational, emotional, financial, and physical.
When you start doing what you’re best at when you’re at your best, there’s a solid chance you can gain three productive hours each day. That’s right. Three hours daily.
Three hours a week of newly productive time becomes 156 hours a year. And guess what that is? That’s the equivalent of almost four weeks of vacation. You get a month of newly freed-up, “do what you want with it” time.
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
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you know what excuses do? They kill hopes, dreams, and goals. Eliminate the excuses, and you start to move forward, because you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can’t make both. So, start by telling yourself the truth. Pardon the drill sergeant for a moment, but take a few minutes and repeat after me: I had the time. I didn’t take it. I had a chance to get it done. I didn’t do it. I was able to finish it. I just didn’t. I could. But I’m choosing not to. It’s not impossible. I’m just not making the time. I’m opting to not meet. I’m deciding to not work out. I’m choosing to not
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Stop saying you don’t have the time. Start admitting you didn’t make the time.
abandon balance as a goal.
John Wesley: “Set yourself on fire with passion, and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”
Balanced people don’t change the world. Passionate people do.
The key to living passionately is to focus your time on what is truly most important to you and to choose to do those things wholeheartedly, with enthusiasm.
Greg McKeown said, “I can do anything but not everything.”1
CHAPTER 3 IN A SNAP When it comes to time, you and I are rich. In fact, we’re loaded. Time doesn’t discriminate. With the two exceptions of the day you’re born and the day you die, everyone gets exactly the same amount of time every day. The opportunities available to a capable person always exceed the time available. Time doesn’t grow. It won’t expand, which is why time management brings you diminishing returns. You can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can’t make both. Stop saying you don’t have the time. Start admitting you didn’t make it. Most people who accomplish significant
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Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro. —Steven Pressfield
Daniel Pink has done a fantastic study of how people perform at different times of the day in his book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. According to Pink, about 14 percent of people are morning people, 21 percent are night owls, and 65 percent of us are somewhere in the middle.1
Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who worked at Twitter in the start-up years, made a similar observation: even the most brilliant Silicon Valley engineers have about three creative and highly productive hours in them daily.2
Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, has researched this quite extensively and argued that our capacity for intense, focused work comes in at around four hours a day.3
Researchers point to the physicians’ circadian rhythms that make focusing harder in the afternoon. Similarly, studies of colonoscopy accuracy (colonoscopies were once artfully described to me by a friend as the art of having a garden hose stuck up your butt) show that endoscopists detect polyps (the growths that can indicate cancer) at a lower rate as the day progresses. Every hour produces a 5 percent reduction in detection.4
CHAPTER 4 IN A SNAP Even though you have twenty-four equal hours in a day, not all hours feel equal. Most people have three to five deeply productive hours in a day. Green Zone: When your energy is high. Your mind is clear, and your focus is sharp. Three leveraged hours beats ten unleveraged hours. Red Zone: When your energy is low. You struggle to pay attention, and you find it very difficult to produce meaningful work. Yellow Zone: When your energy is in the middle. You’re neither at your best nor at your worst. The value of this book’s principles is like the value of paint: it’s all in the
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Pay attention to the things that fuel you.
To quote Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell in the classic Chariots of Fire movie, “I believe that God made me for a purpose…. He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”
Gifting + Passion + Impact = Optimal Green Zone Focus.
Malcolm Gladwell explained how world-class performers develop their gifts in Outliers, the book in which he popularized what’s become widely known as “the ten-thousand-hour rule.” Gladwell argued that becoming world class at something—truly mastering a craft—is a combination of raw gifting and putting in ten thousand hours working on that craft.
CHAPTER 5 IN A SNAP While you have twenty-four equal hours in a day, not all hours feel equal or produce equally. Leveraging your energy is where the exponential returns begin. A narrow gifting can be a superpower. Gifting + Passion + Impact = Optimal Green Zone Focus. Your gifting is what you’re naturally good at. Your passion is what you love to do—what gives you energy. In the same way that not all hours are created equal, not all tasks are created equal. Impact refers to those things that, when done, make the biggest difference, sometimes in the moment but often in the long term. The more
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A few principles to follow when approaching your boss: Express desires, not demands. Telling someone what you want him or her to do is far less effective than expressing what you’d love to see happen. Ask questions instead of making statements. Phrasing your request as a question rather than a statement almost always helps you go further. Make sure you’ve done everything you can do. You want to have maximized the factors within your control before you ask your leader about something beyond your control.
CHAPTER 6 IN A SNAP Do your moderately important tasks in your Yellow Zone, when you have a moderate amount of energy. Do your least important tasks in your Red Zone, when you have the least amount of energy. The biggest Red Zone mistake you can make is to leave important decisions or critical tasks for this zone. When you don’t have complete control over your calendar, focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t. And there’s a surprising amount you can control. You and your time are far less controlled by other people than you think. Be spectacularly good at what you do, and you
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Nobody will ever ask you to accomplish your top priorities. They will only ask you to accomplish theirs.
As Steve Jobs famously noted, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
a clear, simple strategy for how to say no (nicely). 1. Tell them you’d love to meet with them. That’s probably the truth. In a perfect world, you likely would love to meet with them. And that’s a great, honest place to start. So start there…but don’t stop there. Keep moving through the next steps. 2. Express empathy. Empathy defuses tension. Let them know you understand where they’re coming from. You’re on their side and want to be helpful even if you can’t meet with them. 3. Be firm. Even when you express it with kindness, make sure your answer is direct. Let them know that as much as you’d
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If you’re still a little uncomfortable with saying no, you’re not alone. I have a free download for you with several text, email, and verbal scripts you can use to tell people no (nicely). Think of it as a free “How to Say No (Nicely)” cheat sheet. ▼ Download the “How to Say No (Nicely)” cheat sheet at www.AtYourBestToday.com
CHAPTER 7 IN A SNAP Everyone who calls, texts, knocks on your door, and asks you for things is just doing what every human being does: trying to move his or her priorities onto someone else’s agenda. Nobody will ever ask you to accomplish your top priorities. They will only ask you to accomplish theirs. Frankly, you do the same thing. Most people spend their day reacting to everything that comes their way. The wrong things will always want your attention. Spend 80 percent of your time on the things that produce 80 percent of your results. Saying no to good things allows you to say yes to great
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As Nir Eyal pointed out in Indistractable, the opposite of distraction isn’t focus. The opposite of distraction is traction, which comes from a Latin word meaning “to draw or pull,” like a tractor, horse, or truck pulls things forward.2 To put it simply, the reason you don’t have traction on the goals and priorities you’ve set for yourself is that you often get distracted.
Distraction is expensive. That truth is reflected in the expression we use when we try to get someone refocused: “Pay attention!”
Researchers have discovered that it takes the average person almost twenty-five minutes to refocus after a single distraction.
When you do what you’re best at when you’re at your best in the best conditions you can create, your work comes alive. And so do you.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who also walked every day, wrote that “only thoughts which come from walking have any value.”
