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

by Carey Nieuwhof

CHAPTER 8 IN A SNAP Average users touch their phones 2,617 times a day. Heavy users touch their phones 5,427 times a day. When technology runs us, it can ruin us. Technology makes a wonderful servant but a terrible master. If you’re like most people, you don’t need an enemy to interrupt you. You already have one: a perpetually distracted you. The opposite of distraction isn’t focus; it’s traction. Paying attention to the wrong things costs you your priorities. Your goals. Your productivity. Your health. Even your family. And eventually it costs you your potential and your dreams. In the same way that not all hours are created equal and not all tasks are created equal, not all environments are created equal. Find or create the most undistracted environment you can for your Green Zone. Notifications on your devices make you access content on other people’s schedules, not yours. Most things that present themselves as urgent aren’t urgent. The quality of your work is determined by the quality of your thinking. Early mornings can be especially productive, not because you don’t notice the distractions but because those distractions aren’t there in the first place. A focused you is a better you.

Self-care isn’t selfish. It gives you (and me) the energy we need to truly be present for the people who may not be as energizing. You can give only what you’ve got. And if you’ve got nothing left in the tank, you can’t help anybody. I meet so many leaders who have nothing left to give because they’ve given it all away to people who, honestly, weren’t helped by the interaction.

Starting at the center circle, Dunbar suggested that you and I are hardwired for three to five true friendships—intimate relationships with people whom you have the habit of connecting with at least once a week. You don’t even need to use your other hand to count the number of intimate friendships a human can have. The next circle is the twelve to fifteen people he calls your “sympathy group”—friends you connect with at least once a month who share your values, interests, and often perspectives on life. “Curiously,” he noted, “this is also the typical team size in most team sports, the number of members on a jury, the number of Apostles…and the list goes on.” The total of twenty relationships between these first two circles is about all the people most humans can manage to truly know, said Dunbar.3 But wait…I know way more people than that, you’re thinking. And you’re right. You do “know” the names, bios, and perhaps the kids’ names of a larger group. But Dunbar maxed that number out at 150. Not 300. Not 1,500. Not 1.5 million. Just 150. Why that number? Dunbar noted that the average size of ancient and medieval villages was about 150 people. We were wired to live in meaningful communities of about that size. And somehow that number still plays out in the world today. The 150-person network corresponds to everything from the number of friends you send Christmas cards to (if you still send Christmas cards), to the need to abruptly shift management styles in an organization ...

Dunbar Krueger Effect: D theorizes that we are biologically limited to 150 acquaintances because that is the size of a medieval village.

I suggest using Dunbar’s numbers as your digital filter.

Decide how quickly you’ll respond to and how often you’ll reach out to your best friends, friends, and tribe. The principle is simple: stop treating everyone the same, because all relationships aren’t the same. The depth of the relationship should determine the depth and speed of your response. I respond to my family pretty much immediately, and my phone is programmed to let them ring through no matter where I am or what I’m doing. I also happen to have one wife and two kids, so it’s a pretty tiny circle. And my family doesn’t ping me every thirty seconds, so that works just fine. But on to friends. I’ll get back to my three to five within the hour, unless I’m in the middle of really deep work in my Green Zone. I usually get back to my twelve to fifteen within a few hours and always within the same day. My tribe? Probably same day or within forty-eight hours, depending on how they’re trying to reach me. Everyone else? Those are people I or my team will get back to within a few days or sometimes not at all. You simply place these people on a task list and get back to them in your normal workflow down the road. The depth of your response should be gauged by the depth of the relationship. Unless you really want to connect deeply with that person you met at the conference last summer in San Diego, you really don’t need to drop what you’re doing to compose a long, thoughtful response.

“The depth of your response should be gauged by the depth of the relationship.”

CHAPTER 9 IN A SNAP People tend to be the greatest opportunity and the greatest obstacle. The people who want your time are rarely the people who should have your time. And the people who should get most of your premium time rarely ask you for it. Healthy relationships are mutual. If you spend most of your time with draining people, you’ll live much of your life feeling drained. Spend most of your time with the people who produce most of your results and the least amount of time with the people who don’t. In your personal life, spend 80 percent of your time with the people you care most about, leaving 20 percent for others. The number of relationships people can have is not just a matter of preference or willingness; the limits are cognitive, having to do with the way the brain works. People are hardwired for three to five close friendships, twelve to fifteen friendships, and 150 personal relationships. You were designed to handle between three and 150 relationships in a meaningful way, but social media will pressure you to connect with far more. Despite being designed to handle up to 150 personal relationships, social media pressures you to connect with far more people. People have far better manners than technology does. Messages are always sent at the convenience of the sender, never at the convenience of the recipient. The deepest relationships rightly belong with the closest connections. Stop treating everyone the same, because all relationships aren’t the same. The d...

Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it’s really jail disguised as liberty. The moment you think the white space on your calendar gives you freedom, disappointment is right around the corner.

Everyone’s calendar looks different, but before you set up yours, I’ll share a few examples of priorities I fix in my Thrive Calendar: I spend my first hour every day quietly, sipping hot tea, reflecting, praying, and reading Scripture. For me, that’s the building block of my life, so I write it into my calendar. I save my mornings for things that I’m best at and that energize me—writing, thinking, strategizing, planning. But mostly writing. I block off some evenings and weekends for personal and family time. I keep Fridays free of scheduled meetings so I can finish projects, dream a little, do some errands, and on good weeks, take off early. Meetings usually have to fit into designated slots in the afternoon or late morning once I’m out of my Green Zone. I set a maximum number of meetings every week (these days, it’s fifteen). Exceptions have to be just that—exceptions for critical reasons.

There are four key decisions for you to make when you design your Thrive Calendar: Decide what you will and won’t do within each zone. Decide whom you will and won’t meet with. Decide when you’ll do specific tasks within each zone. Decide where you’ll do your work, especially your Green Zone work.

CHAPTER 10 IN A SNAP Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it’s really jail disguised as liberty. The key to helping you thrive is to schedule all your priorities ahead of time. Decide how you’ll spend your time before others decide for you. A blank calendar is pretty much a guarantee that you’ll spend your time on everyone else’s priorities, not yours. Prescheduling your calendar is different from keeping a to-do list. So many overwhelmed people have long to-do lists but get no further ahead. In fact, they just fall further behind. A fixed calendar is a predecision about how to spend your work and personal time, most often in repeating appointments with yourself, week after week, year after year. You become what you repeatedly do. When it comes to managing a team’s time and energy, greater awareness is the first step toward greater effectiveness. Healthy people respect the boundaries you set. Unhealthy people don’t.

Fixing something before it breaks is far less costly than fixing it after it breaks, in terms of both time and money. I got the few hundred dollars I spent every year in preventive maintenance back multiple times over by being able to drive a reliable SUV for years after others had consigned theirs to the junkyard. Preventive maintenance on your life works the same way. If you anticipate, instigate. Doing something before change happens is the best way to be ready when change happens. And if you need to tweak or reboot again after the change, no problem. This can sound very theoretical, so let’s get practical. When you see or sense change happening, here are five questions that can help you act as you anticipate: What’s about to change? What opportunities and obstacles will the change likely present? What’s most likely to happen to the demands on my time? What’s most likely to happen to my energy levels? (Note: Any change that involves loss or triggers sadness will likely reduce your energy levels at least temporarily. The greater the loss, the greater the loss of energy.) What adjustments can I make to my Thrive Calendar now to prepare for the new reality?

Here are three questions to help you discern your meeting ratio and cap: How many meetings a day can I handle before I become tired? How many meetings a week can I take before I feel depleted? How many meetings can I take before my work suffers and I have to stay late or come in early to get my most important tasks done on time?

CHAPTER 11 IN A SNAP Stress is a good bad word. Our culture hates stress yet thrives on it. As a result, the pullback toward stress is almost gravitational. Stress is a badge of honor in the hamster-wheel life everybody’s living. You can’t hire or hope your way out of overwhelm. Instead, you need to lead yourself out of it. Your agility is the cap on your ability. If you anticipate, instigate. Doing something before change happens is the best way to be ready when change happens. Over time, adjust three key percentages that will help you thrive: the percentage of time spent alone versus with people, the percentage of time spent in meetings, and the percentage of time spent on the road versus at home. As an employer, you don’t want perpetually stressed employees. People bring their whole selves to the job, and when they’re thriving, so does your company.

CHAPTER 12 IN A SNAP Doing what you’re best at when you’re at your best is the best way to escape the Stress Spiral and live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. The dopamine hits that progress generates are motivating, but character formation and growth are more deeply motivating. Doing what you’re best at when you’re at your best is to some extent about what you accomplish, but to a much deeper extent, it’s about creating the space you need to focus on who you’re becoming. Who you’re becoming is so much more important than what you’re doing.